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PRESENTED BY 



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DAVID A. WELLS PRIZE ESSAYS 

SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN 

COLONIES AT THE OUTBREAK 

OF THE REVOLUTION 



SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE 
WEST INDIES TRADE 

BY 

WILLIAM S. McCLELLAN 



PRINTED FOR THE 

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 

OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE 

Wp tftoffat, |9arb anto tflompanp, i^eto §*ork 

1912 



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PREFACE 

The importance of whatever economic and 
governmental questions are involved in a 
study of smuggling at the outbreak of the 
American Revolution consists primarily in 
the relation they bear to the larger questions 
of a similar nature, operative at the time. 
In general terms, the Revolution was the 
result of a constantly developing spirit of 
independence, into which entered many ele- 
ments, the political being quite as important 
as the economic. It will be the purpose of 
this essay, then, to establish the particular 
function which smuggling — and especially that 
in connection with the West Indies trade — 
performed in bringing to bear the influences 
exerted by these two elements. To accom- 
plish this it is essential to treat of the devel- 
opment of American colonial trade and with 
it the growth and operation of the British 
commercial and colonial systems, in which 
are found both causes and effects of the preva- 
lence of smuggling. 



vi PREFACE 

The endeavor has been made to eliminate 
from this essay the many features of the 
British colonial and commercial systems 
which do not have a very direct bearing on 
the question of smuggling, but it has seemed 
necessary to show cause why many of these 
features are without special significance in 
a discussion of the economic and govern- 
mental questions which arise. No attempt 
has been made to assign any comparative 
rating to the influence which smuggling may 
have had among the forces which resulted in 
the Revolution. 

Due reference has been made in the foot- 
notes to the source material and secondary 
authorities consulted, while, for convenience, 
a complete list of such works has been ap- 
pended. The writer is greatly indebted to 
Assistant Professor David Taggart Clark of 
Williams College for assistance in the prepar- 
ation of the manuscript for publication. 

William Smith McClellan. 

York, Pa., October, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

Colonial Trade 

Expansion of Commerce — Reasons for Growth of Trade 
between England and West Indies — West Indies Trade 
with North America — Slave Trade in West Indies — Char- 
acter of Early Traders — Effect of Early Trade Conditions. 

CHAPTER II 

English Commercial System 



Sponsors for System — Precedents for System — Monopoly 
Features — Limitations on Direct Importation and Expor- 
tation — "Enumerated Articles" — Minor Provisions of 
Acts — Proposed Ideal Commercial Position of England — 
Growth of Trade between England and America — Twofold 
Design of Mercantile Policy — Bounties, Premiums, and 
Drawbacks — Restriction of Colonial Manufactures — Eng- 
lish Commercial Rivalries — Contemporary Views of ,, 
System. 

CHAPTER III 

The Causes and Character of Colonial 

Smuggling 27 

Differences in "Illicit Trade" — Slight Importance of Eva- 
sions of Acts restricting Trade to England — England the 
Natural Trading Place — Disadvantages of Exportation to 
England — West Indies, the Source of Money for Colonies 
— England, the Destination of Money from Colonies — 
West Indies, the only Adequate Market — New England 



vni CONTENTS 

FAQS 

Fisheries and their Dependence on West Indies Trade — 
Situation in Southern Colonies — The Molasses Act and 
its Non-Enforcement — British View of Continental and 
West Indies Colonies — Organization of Customs Service — 
Corruption of Service — Contraband Trade with French 
and Spanish — Motives underlying French Contraband 
. Trade and British Objections to it — Political and Eco- 
nomic Motives — Assistance of Navy — Admiralty Courts 
vs. Common Law Courts. 

CHAPTER IV 

Political Situation in England and America 62 

Situation revealed by French Contraband Trade — British 
Need of Revenue — Sugar Act and Revenue Measures — 
Colonists' Objections to Revenue Measures — The Preroga- 
tive — Colonial Governments — Character of Americans — 
Reasons making for keeping Idea of Independence in 
Background — Early Taxation Measures — Political Trou- 
bles of Local Nature — "Writs of Assistance." 

CHAPTER V 

Enforcement of Law and Its Results .... 79 

Universal Bearing of Molasses Act — Forces converging in 
1763— Reforms suggested by Evasions of Molasses Act — 
Extent of Smuggling — Public Sentiment — Commercial 
Grievances vs. Political Grievances — Development of 
National Spirit — Conclusions. 



INTRODUCTION 

This is the third in the Williams series of 
David A. Wells prize essays in Political 
Science. In 1904 Mr. Elwin L. Page was 
awarded the prize for an essay on "The Con- 
tributions of the Landed Man to Civil 
Liberty;" in 1907 Mr. Shepard A. Morgan 
for an essay on "The History of Parliamen- 
tary Taxation in England." Mr. McClellan 
received the prize for the essay following, in 
1911. 

The competition is open to Seniors in 
Williams College, and to graduates of not 
more than three years' standing. As Williams 
offers no graduate courses it is obvious, under 
these circumstances, that the award does not 
demand original research, but calls rather for 
"evidences of careful reading of secondary 
authorities," and the "thoughtful handling" 
and working over of material readily acces- 
sible upon the subjects from time to time 
suggested for treatment. 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

In the present essay Mr. McClellan follows 
Professor Ashley and others in carefully and 
justly distinguishing between the general body 
of restrictive trade laws constituting the old 
English "colonial system," and the special 
protective legislation of 1733 passed in the 
single interest of the sugar-planters of the 
British West Indies, the famous "Molasses 
Act." The former, the general restrictive 
laws, the author holds, did not operate as 
serious actual constraint, since England, the 
legal beneficiary, was the natural monopolist 
of the colonial trade; the latter, the "Molas- 
ses Act," defied the natural channels of com- 
merce. 

As a result of these circumstances, the viola- 
tions of the general "system" were probably, 
the essayist writes, relatively slight and un- 
important, but the restrictions on imports 
from the West Indies were systematically and 
persistently ignored, producing a condition of 
smuggling so universal and well-nigh respect- 
able as to raise the question whether the 
operations of the merchants could properly be 
designated by that term. 

When a reforming British minister, at the 



INTRODUCTION xi 

end of the French and Indian War, sought to 
"clean up" America in this regard, while he 
tried to induce the colonists to pay a minor 
share of the expenses of their own defence, 
though he reduced the molasses duties by half 
almost as soon as he tried to collect them, his 
zeal for fiscal efficiency proved both futile 
and ill-timed. Otis had already quickened 
the spirit of protest against administrative 
surveillance, and now commercial irritation 
at interference with established courses be- 
came blended with repugnance to outside 
taxation of any sort, and ultimately lost in 
the larger political issue of the complete 
realization of the spirit, innate in the colonies, 
of American independence. Such is the very 
briefest outline of Mr. McClellan's essay. 

Thus the author shows again the error in 
the idea that the colonists fought the Revolu- 
tion simply in order to free themselves from 
the general constraint of the colonial system, 
while he makes clear the force and meaning 
of the admission which John Adams declared 
himself unashamed to make "that molasses 
was an essential ingredient of our indepen- 
dence." 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

Chapters III and V, containing the bulk of 
the author's distinctive material, and his con- 
clusions, or better Chapters III to the end, 
may be especially commended to the busy 
reader, but the short introductory chapter on 
the New World commerce, and the well- 
summarized account of "The English Com- 
mercial System" in Chapter II, appropriately 
introduce the main subject of the essay, which 
may well be read entire for the interesting 
and important testimony, from contemporary 
and later writers, which the author has co- 
ordinated together on the commercial life of 
our great-great-grandfathers, and on the rela- 
tions of economic and political forces to the 
birth of the American Republic. 

The subject set for competition having been 
"Smuggling in the American Colonies at the 
Outbreak of the Revolution with especial 
Reference to the West Indies Trade," Mr. 
McClellan did not attempt to go at length 
into the somewhat controverted question of 
the amount of violation of the general Trade 
Acts, particularly of the great Statute of 1663 
which sought to confine so much of the co- 
lonial import trade to England. I incline to 



INTRODUCTION Xlll 

the opinion that a more thorough investiga- 
tion of all the evidence available on this 
question than has yet, so far as I am aware, 
been made might show somewhat greater 
prevalence of the smuggling in of European 
goods than the author's essay, in its present 
form at any rate, and some of the authorities, 
concede. The future works to come from the 
authoritative hand of Mr. Beer will undoubt- 
edly illumine this question. I incline to think, 
also, that the "enumeration" of great colonial 
exports operated at times and in places as a 
slightly more conscious inconvenience than has 
sometimes been suggested. 

Mr. McClellan was unfortunately deprived 
of the fullest opportunity which he would have 
desired, to work his essay over before publica- 
tion. 

Whatever the facts may have been before 
1763 or before 1775, it seems indisputable that 
the time must before many years have come 
when the general restrictions of the colonial 
system, if unmodified, would have proved 
either an intolerable shackle upon American 
development, or else unenforceable, or more 
likely both. The priority of England in the 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

great inventions and the distraction of the 
Continent in war would have postponed, but 
could hardly have averted the time. Had 
American commercial freedom not been ob- 
tained when it was, or before many decades, 
the wonderful story of material progress which 
ensued must have read some degrees less 
marvelously. The old English colonial sys- 
tem, like all other similar systems, was eco- 
nomically vicious, and unenlightenedly selfish, 
to the profit of a part and not of the whole, 
whatever the Navigations Acts may have done 
for New England shipping or British power on 
the sea. The very recent language of a French 
critic of his country's colonial policy states a 
principle as true in the past as now. " Ce n'est 
pas en reduisant le pouvoir d'achat des indi- 
genes, en leur rendant l'existence plus difficile, 
et en augmentant les prix de revient de toutes 
les enterprises coloniales que Ton favorisera la 
mise en valeur de nos colonies et leur puissance 
de production, done d'acquisition par voie 
d'echange". 1 

Happily for the British Empire, since the 
days of Grenville and Sheffield, England has 

1 Journ. des Economistes, fevr., 1912, p. 227. 



INTRODUCTION xv 

learned a wisdom that some rivals and some of 
her own colonies might well emulate. Should 
the day come of her relapse to bygone falla- 
cies, she would deal with her own hand as 
serious a blow as any that she might give to 
her own enduring wealth and power. 

By the terms of the foundation of the 
competition, "No subject shall be selected 
for competitive writing or investigating and 
no essay shall be considered which in any way 
advocates or defends the spoliation of prop- 
erty under form or process of law; or the 
restriction of commerce in times of peace by 
legislation, except for moral or sanitary pur- 
poses; or the enactment of usury laws; or 
the impairment of contracts by the debase- 
ment of coin ; or the issue and use by Govern- 
ment of irredeemable notes or promises to 
pay intended to be used as currency and as 
a substitute for money; or which defends the 
endowment of such 'paper,' 'notes,' and 
'promises to pay' with the legal tender qual- 
ity." A subject more congenial than the 
present to the spirit and letter of this pro- 
vision, or more appropriate could hardly be 
found to commemorate the name and the 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

doctrine as an economist of the distinguished 
worker whose generosity established these 
prizes. A more striking or momentous in- 
stance of legislative favoritism and legislative 
fatuity can scarcely exist, in all the modern 
history of blundering governmental inter- 
ference with the freedom of commerce, than 
the solemn parliamentary enactment of 1733 
whose inefficacy, violation, and remoter con- 
sequences it was Mr. McClellan's special task 
to set forth. 

Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793, in words as 
applicable to the trade of the foreign, as of 
the British, West Indies, "It may, I think, be 
affirmed, without hazard of contradiction, that 
if ever there was any one particular branch of 
commerce in the world, that called less for 
restraint and limitation than any other, it was 
the trade which, previous to the year 1774, 
was carried on between the planters of the 
West Indies and the inhabitants of North 
America." * 

The philosophy of laisser faire is unques- 
tionably inadequate to certain exigencies of 
our time, but the past achievements of state 

Dublin Edition, II., p. 377. 



INTRODUCTION xvil 

regulation of trade might well bespeak a little 
more caution and modesty in the facile reason- 
ings of some cavalier etatisme of the present 

day. 

What field more alluring to state interven- 
tion than where humanity cries for social in- 
surance? Yet it is a German professor who 
even here raises the question "si nous n'ob- 
tenons pas le contraire de ce que nous avons 
ambitionne, si nous n'asservissons pas des 
forces psychiques, alors que nous avons voulu 
les liberer, si nous ne creons pas la dependance 
la ou nous avons desire l'independance." 1 

If the Molasses Act might conceivably have 
contemplated any imperial object, it sought to 
support the British power; in the outcome it 
contributed largely to the loss of the American 
empire. 

And that the irony of events might nowise 
fail, the colonial patriots who championed in 
New England the principles of English liberty 
received something of their initial impulse to 
the contest for freedom and free molasses from 
the threatened curtailment of their profits in 
the distillation of intoxication for African 

1 Journ. des Economistes, juillet, 1912, p. 26. 



xvm INTRODUCTION 

tyrants and the thriving business of negro en- 
slavement, a trade apparently still plied from 
the city of the Puritans in the years when South 
Carolina, like Virginia, was being opposed by 
the British Government in her effort to re- 
strict that travesty of commerce, while the 
self-willed little colony that was the greatest 
smuggler and slaver of them all was a leader 
among the others not simply in her religious 
and political freedom, but even in early, though 
forgotten, anti-slavery legislation. 

The noble agitations of the revolutionary 
epoch, availing much for the black man as for 
the white, failed, alas! to do enough, and it 
may be some minor portion of that national 
retribution of which George Mason warned his 
countrymen, that the fair vision of commercial 
freedom, which, but for New England's "com- 
promise of iniquity," might seem to have 
shone before the Republic at its birth, should 
in the later days have become so clouded and 
obscured, to the entailing of political evil, in 
very consequence of the struggles engendered 
by the Nation's congenital curse. 

It appears to be the case that, in the gener- 
ation before the Revolution at least, consider- 



INTRODUCTION xix 

ably greater effort was made to enforce the law 
under the royal governors of Massachusetts 
Bay than in the charter colony of Rhode Island, 
a discrimination resented by the merchants of 
Boston which apparently contributed not a 
little to the revolutionary spirit and promi- 
nence of that port. It would be indeed inter- 
esting to speculate whether events might have 
been appreciably altered had there been uni- 
form enforcement or uniform laxity in all the 
colonies. Modern difficulties springing from 
variations of law or its enforcement in different 
and competing jurisdictions had thus this in- 
teresting prototype. 

But the study of colonial smuggling must 
at least raise a deeper, and perhaps a sadder, 
question, the question whether sensitive regard 
for the majesty of law still suffers amongst the 
American people from the injury wrought by 
the foolish legislative officiousness of an eigh- 
teenth-century English Parliament. 

An effort has been made to free this essay 
from any material error of statement or quota- 
tion, but both the author and the undersigned 
wil be grateful for information of any in- 
accuracies that may be found. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

If any reader of Mr. McClellan's essay shall 
be led as was the undersigned, to seek wider 
acquaintance with the contemporary pam- 
phleteers or administrators cited in its pages, 
the essayist will have done his best service, 
and his reader be amply repaid for entry into 
a field rich in interest, replete with the fasci- 
nation of a past close-linked, yet contrasting, 
with the present, the strongly-individualized 
elder brother of To-day. 

DAVID TAGGART CLARK, 

Assistant Professor of Economics. 

Williams College, October, 1912. 



SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN 
COLONIES 

CHAPTER I 

COLONIAL TRADE 

With the discovery of America in 1492, 

and the rounding of Africa by Da Gama in 

1497, 1 supplemented by the discovery of the 

Pacific in 1513 and by Magellan's voyage six 

years later, commerce left its narrower bounds 

and became world-wide. The ports on the 

shores of the Mediterranean yielded com- Ex P ansi <"» 

of 
mercial supremacy to those on the shores Commerce 

of the Atlantic. England, France, Denmark, 
Portugal, and Holland followed in the wake 
of Spain to America, attracted by the pros- 
pects of great wealth. To commercial enter- 
prise can be attributed the discovery and 
rapid development of the West Indies and 
the North American continent. Much of 

1 For an account of the Spanish explorations, see E. G. Bourne 
Spain in America, chaps. III-X. 



2 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

the work of exploration and colonization 
was left in the hands of trading companies 
and individuals who incurred the necessary 
risks for the sake of the expected returns. 

The natural route for the early traders 
to follow was that of which Columbus was 
the pioneer. The West Indies, therefore, be- 
came the earliest great trading centre of the 
Reasons for New World commerce. Sugar, tobacco, cot- 
Trade t° n ' coffee, and other products of the Islands, 
Between were in great demand in Europe, for hereto- 

England 

and the fore the supply of most of these commodities 
West indies j ia( j k een exceedingly limited, and their cost 
had caused them to be classed almost as 
luxuries. Spain and Portugal had always 
considered that the foreign trade which 
brought into the realm the largest quantities 
of gold and silver was the most profitable. 1 
The traders of those countries, therefore, 
early gave much of their attention to the 
South American continent where the mines 
needed only development to yield almost 
unlimited quantities of the precious metals. 

1 Cf. E. G. Bourne, Spain in America, page 142. "To the South, 
to the South, for the riches of the Aequinoctiall they that seek riches 
must go, not unto the cold and frozen North." — Peter Martyr, De 
Rebus Oceanicis, dec. VIII., lib. X, in Hakluyt, Voyages, V. 475. 



COLONIAL TRADE 3 

Not only was the importation of gold and 
silver counted by these countries as the chief 
function of foreign trade, but prohibition 
was placed on their exportation. Thus the 
traders of these countries were deprived of the 
legitimate use of the instrument of commerce, 
economically considered the most useful. In 
England and France, from the seventeenth 
century on, the exportation of coin alone was 
prohibited while even that restriction was 
lacking in Holland. These three nations, 
abandoning Bullionism for Mercantilism, 
moved forward towards the principle made 
famous by Adam Smith that "The importa- 
tion of gold and silver is not the principal, 
much less the sole, benefit which a nation de- 
rives from its foreign trade. Between whatso- 
ever places foreign trade is carried on, they 
all of them derive two distinct benefits from it. 
It carries out that surplus part of the product 
of their land and labour for which there is no 
demand among them and brings back in return 
for it something else for which there is a de- 
mand." 1 Holland advanced farthest toward 
this principle, though even she fell far short of 

1 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, bk. IV, chap. I. 



4 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

its full acceptance. Considering the English 
trade alone, it is evident that by reason of the 
nature of the products of the West Indies, and 
by reason of the requirements of the two sec- 
tions, the inevitable result would be the up- 
building of a great trade. The demand for 
the products of the Islands came to be hardly 
less constant than the demand for money it- 
self, and each country produced principally 
that which the other could not produce and 
sorely needed. 
West indies The reasons which led to the rapid growth 
North * °f commerce between England and the West 
America Indies held equally in regard to the devel- 
opment of trade which the establishment 
of the North American colonies opened up. 1 

1 Lord Sheffield's figures for the trade between England and the 
West Indies are 

Imports from Exports to 

West Indies 
Av. 1700—1710 £629,127 £313,038 

Av. 1760—1770 273,334 1,133,233 

"Observations," App., table No. 9, page 20. 

The decrease in imports into Great Britain is an apparent decrease 
rather than a real one. As we shall later see, the Islands sent the 
greater part of their products, rum and molasses, to the Northern 
colonies, receiving therefrom products which Great Britain could 
not so readily supply. Much of their products was subsequently 
re-exported to England from the American colonies. 



COLONIAL TRADE 5 

The West Indies were placed between two 
markets whose demands always exceeded the 
supply and from each of which they could 
draw in return those goods, manufactured or 
natural, without which they would be seriously 
handicapped. 

The history of the slave trade in the West 
Indies begins almost simultaneously with the 
discovery of the Islands, although the first 
strong impetus to the traffic was received when 
Spain authorized an importation of four thou- 
sand slaves into the Spanish islands. 1 An The Slave 
idea of the extent of this traffic can be gained the West 
best from the figures furnished by Bryan i ndi es 
Edwards, the historian of the West Indies, 
who states that from 1700 to 1786 not less 
than 610,000 slaves were imported into Ja- 
maica alone. 2 Aside from its extent, the slave 
trade was of importance economically because 

1 The Spanish government in 1517, arranged for the importation 
of four thousand slaves in eight years. Continuously after that 
time contracts were made with slave dealers to import slaves in in- 
creasing numbers. The business between 1609 and 1615 was con- 
ducted in the king's name. Cf. E. G. Bourne, Spain in America, 
American Nation Series, III, chap. XVIII. 

2 Edwards estimates that from 1680 to 1786, 2,130,000 slaves were 
imported into all the British colonies in America. Hist, of W. I., 
Bk. IV, Ch. II. 



6 



SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Character 
of Early 
Traders 



it was only through it that the sugar cultiva- 
tion was fostered. 

The West Indies offered strong attractions 
to the traders of European nations. The 
vessel laden with a miscellaneous cargo of 
manufactured goods could find many ports 
which offered numerous customers. It must 
always be remembered, however, that this 
trade was fraught with unusual dangers. 
The presence of pirates and near-pirates had to 
be reckoned with. The formation of the Islands 
rendered them particularly suitable for the 
rendezvous of all kinds of freebooters. Constant 
warfare between European nations greatly 
stimulated privateering and their contests 
over the possession of one or another of the 
islands added to the dangers of commerce and 
made any restrictive law, which any one nation 
might enact, little better than a dead letter. 
It is doubtful if many of the traders them- 
selves were of a much better class than the 
pirates. Admiral Penn has been described, 
though perhaps with some exaggeration, as 
"little better than the piratical sea-dog of his 
time." The navigators of the age, if not 

^iske, The West Indies, 79. 



COLONIAL TRADE 7 

law-disregarding by nature, were bold and 
daring by necessity. Consequently if the 
ready customers were not forthcoming, the 
trader could often force an exchange on 
some of the weaker islanders or find a readier 
market at some unrestricted port. These 
possibilities of breaking through the commer- 
cial restrictions universal in the age aided 
materially in establishing the commercial po- 
sition of the West Indies. 

The effect which this type of traders and The Effect 
their methods had on the rapidly disappear- Trade 
ing native islanders and the colonists, not Condltlons 
of the highest character at best, could hardly 
have been other than to create an eager and 
tacit acceptance of smuggling and all kinds 
of illicit trade as matters of course. Such was 
the heritage which they bequeathed to the 
island inhabitants of the succeeding centuries 
and it was with much the same spirit, accen- 
tuated by a keener commercial capacity, that 
their descendants entered into trade relations 
in that later period when the trade between 
the West Indies and the North American 
continent became, as we shall see, essential 
to the development of the latter. 



CHAPTER II 

ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 

When Grenville became the practical head 
of George Ill's government in 1763, a more 
thorough attempt was made than ever before 
to enforce the Acts of Trade and Navigation. 
Fully to understand the scope of these acts 
it is necessary to go back more than a century. 
Almost all additions after that of the 7th and 
8th of William III merely added points of 
detail or aimed to facilitate the execution of 
the laws of this class passed in the seventeenth 
century. A careful study of these acts reveals 
sponsors of the fact that behind them stood as sponsors 
Commercial an ^ chief beneficiaries the merchants and 
System shipping interests. It was they who reaped 
the lion's share of the benefits and not, ex- 
cept as shipping favored naval defense, the 
British people. In the Ordinance of 1645 it 
is stated that "Nothing more enricheth this 
Kingdome than commerce." This proposi- 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 9 

tion was the basis on which the early acts 
rested. Theoretically, increased commerce 
was to result in greater wealth in Great 
Britain, especially for the people as a whole; 
practically, the wealth was absorbed by the 
great merchants and ship-owners, and the 
people received such benefits as they did only 
very indirectly. Those indirect advantages 
accruing to them from the colonial system, as 
distinct from the Navigation Laws, were more 
than offset by the expense of the system and 
the cost of the whole colonial scheme of the 
period. After the Stuarts until 1763 revenue 
for the public treasury was only a minor part 
of the commercial program. Bancroft, quot- 
ing from the Grenville Papers, says that an 
American revenue of less than £2000 cost Great ' 
Britain £7000 or £8000 a year to collect. 1 ' 

England could point to precedent in adopt- Precedent 
ing the maritime policy about to be described, „ or . . 

" x t/ > Commercial 

inasmuch as every other sea-power of Europe Policy of 
had and was enforcing a similar plan, attended 
often with much more severity. The Span- 
ish colonies could trade legally with Spain 
alone and until 1765 and later their trade had to 

1 III, 31. See also Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence, 51. 



10 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

go almost wholly to one port, first Seville, then 
Cadiz. 1 Portugal formulated similar restric- 
tions for the Brazilian trade, while France and 
Holland confined their colonies only less closely. 
It was therefore the system which seemed the 
natural one and every act of trade formed a 
step in the upbuilding of the whole structure. 
Lord Sheffield in his "Observations on 
American Commerce," writing when our colo- 
nial period had just closed, remarks, "The 
only use and advantage of American Colonies 
Monopoly or West Indies Islands is in the monopoly of 
their consumption and the carriage of their 
produce." His sweeping statement repre- 
sents the extreme view of the protectionists 
but nevertheless contains one guiding motive 
of the commercial legislation. The monopoly 
feature was considered essential by all. G. L. 
Beer, referring to the earlier period, gives as 
the standard by which England measured the 
value of her colonies, the ability of the colony 
to produce "commodities that the mother 
country would otherwise have to buy from 
foreigners." 2 Properly and legally to secure to 

1 See E. G. Bourne, Spain in America, chap. xix. 

2 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 135. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 11 

the mother country this advantage it was 
enacted in 1660: "That from and after the 
First Day of April, 1661, no Sugars, Tobacco, 
Cotton- Wool, Indicoes, Ginger, Fustick or 
other dying Wood, of the Growth, Production, 
or Manufacture of any English Plantations in 
America, Asia, or Africa shall be shipped, car- 
ried, conveyed, or transported from any of the Direct 
English Plantations in America to any Land, Limited l ° D 
Island, Territory, Dominion, Port, or Place 
whatsoever, other than to such other English 
Plantations as do belong to His Majesty, His 
Heirs and Successors, or to the Kingdom of 
England or Ireland, or Principality of Wales, 
or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, there to be 
laid on Shore, under Penalty of the Forfeiture 
of the said Goods, or the full Value thereof, as 
also of the Ship, with all her Guns, Tackle, 
etc." 1 In addition to these penalties, liability 
to forfeiture of bonds, required to bring the 
goods into lawful territory, was intended to 
make doubly sure the compliance with the law. 
The commodities specifically mentioned 
in this act formed what were called the "enu- 
merated articles." The purpose of the forma- 

1 First Navigation Act. 12, Charles II, c. 18, 1660. 



12 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

tion of this class was to give to the British 
merchant a monopoly in the distribution of 
these goods and to the English manufacturer a 
rich supply of raw materials and a virtually 
non-competitive market. 1 While the non- 
Enumerated enumerated articles could be carried at first 
to any part of the world, it must be remem- 
bered that legally after 1663 the colonists 
would usually have to return in ballast, or 
sell their ships, or meet the expenses of un- 
loading and reloading at some English port. 
In final analysis, the act diminished profitable 
exportation from the colonies to any but Eng- 
lish ports and it is self-evident that the pur- 
pose of the act was to favor the home country 
and that there was only secondary thought 
of revenue involved. 

Following quickly was the Act of 1663, 
which prohibited the bringing into the colo- 
nies, except from English ports, of commodi- 

1 The restrictions in this "enumerated" list were not as severe 
as would appear at first glance. "None of the staple articles of the 
trade of New England were ever enumerated during the century 
1660-1760, — neither fish, nor vessels, nor timber (except masts and 
bowsprits after 1706), nor rum; and during the whole period before us 
they could be carried wherever a market might be found." W. J. Ash- 
ley, Surveys, page 315. Tobacco, the staple product of Virginia, was 
thus at first the only continental commodity of importance on the list,, 
and this was given by law a more than adequate market in England. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 13 

ties "of the Growth, Production or Manufac- 
ture of Europe." 1 The preamble to this sec- 
tion furnishes an excellent illustration of the 
attitude assumed towards colonial possessions Direct 
by England. It reads, — "And in regard His L ^ t r e J 10n 
Majesty's Plantations beyond the Seas are 
inhabited and peopled by His Subjects of this, 
His Kingdom of England, For the maintaining 
a greater Correspondence and Kindness be- 
tween them and keeping them in a firmer De- 
pendence upon it, and rendring them yet more 
beneficial and advantageous unto it, in the 
farther Imployment and Encrease of English 
Shipping and Seamen, Vent of English Woolen 
and other Manufactures and Commodities, 
rendring the Navigation to and from the same 
more safe and cheap, and making this King- Illustratl< > n 

l ' . . of Britain's 

dom a Staple, not only of the Commodities of Attitude 
those Plantations, but also of the Commodi- c °^ni al s 
ties of other Countries and Places, for the sup- Possessions 
plying of them, and it being the Usage of other 
Nations to keep their Plantation Trade to 

1 15, Charles II, c. 7, sec. VI. Sec. VII of the same act makes ex- 
ceptions in the case of salt for the New England and Newfoundland 
fisheries, of wines from Madeira and the Azores, servants and horses 
from Scotland and Ireland, etc. In all cases, however, the shipping 
must be done in English vessels with English masters and crews. The 
term "English" included colonial. 



14 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Other 

Provisions 
of Acts 



Additions 
and Modi- 
fications 



themselves, Be it enacted, . . . "* While 
the wording is made to indicate, in some places 
that the colonists are to receive their share of 
the expected boons, the preamble, as a whole, 
leaves no doubt as to the intent of the law itself. 

The remaining provisions of the earlier 
acts operated for the advantage of the co- 
lonial almost as much as for the English 
merchants. Objections to them were of slight 
importance and reflected local rather than 
general conditions of commerce and senti- 
ment. Briefly, they were, (1) The confining 
of the carrying trade to English or colonial 
ships, whose master and three-fourths of 
whose crews must be English ; 2 (2) The 
exclusion of foreigners from the coasting 
trade; 3 (3) The prohibiting of aliens to 
act as factors or merchants in the colonies. 

Subsequent acts added to the list of enu- 
merated articles and more narrowly restricted 
the number of ports to which non-enumerated 
articles might be sent. From time to time, 
amendments were made designed to offset 
some of the conditions which the colonists 

1 Second Navigation Act. 15, Charles II, c. 7, sec. V, 1663. 

2 12, Charles II, c. 18. Sec. i., iii. 

3 12, Charles II, c. 18, Sec. vi. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 15 

found most objectionable and about which 

they made the greatest complaint. 

England, by these acts, was to play the 

part of producer or consumer or middleman in 

nearly every transaction in which the colonies 

figured. If the Continental nations were to Proposed 

... Ideal 

trade directly with America, English mer- commercial 

chants would be subjected to a competition J* 8 !,* 10 *! 
unfair in the business conception of the time. 
For the colonies England was to be the great 
distributing point from which everything 
was to be received and to which many of the 
most important colonial products — all those, 
in fact, distinctively non-European in char- 
acter — were exclusively to be sent. From the 
standpoint of the British merchant, the en- 
forcement of these acts would create an ideal 
market in America, one in which he could sell 
high and buy low. From the standpoint of 
the British statesman, their enforcement would 
mean the realization of the ideal towards 
which European nations strove, — "A self- 
sufficient economic empire." x 

The great growth of trade between England 
and America is attested by these figures: 

1 G. L. Beer, Col. Pol, 209. 



16 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Growth 
of Trade 
Between 
England and 
America 

Encourage- 
ments 
Offered 
American 
Trade 



Twofold 
Design of 
Mercantile 
Policy 



the exports from the colonies increased from 
£265,783 in 1710 to £1,044,591 in 1770, 
while the imports rose from £267,205 to 
£1,763,409 in the same years. 1 

If the upbuilding of a great trade between 
England and America meant success to the 
British trader, that very success carried with 
it, in a smaller measure, the success of the 
American trader. Each ship that came to 
the colonies laden with the profit-bearing 
goods of the Englishman departed laden with 
goods whose sale meant profit, not always in 
smaller degree, for the colonist. In fact, it is 
not too much to say that much aid toward 
promoting the prosperity of the colonies was 
offered by the English authorities, with the 
very important proviso, however, that in the 
achieving of this prosperity, the interests of 
the English merchants should always be 
maintained as paramount. In 1750 an act 
was passed "to encourage the Importation 
of Pig and Bar Iron from His Majesty's 
Colonies in America; and to prevent the 
Erection of any Mill or other Engine for 



1 Lord Sheffield, Observations, App., table No. 9, page 24. Figures 
are averages for the decades preceding each date. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 17 

Slitting or Rolling of Iron; or any Plateing 
Forge to work with a Tilt Hammer; or any 
Furnace for making Steel in any of the said 
Colonies." 1 This illustrates excellently the 
twofold design of the colonial policy. By ad- 
mitting free of duty the pig-iron which could 
not be advantageously produced in England, 
encouragement is given to colonial activity in 
that pursuit, but this activity must cease when 
it reaches a point where the further develop- 
ment of the industry can be carried on with Bounties 
great profit in England. Earlier than this, 
during Anne's reign, bounties began to be 
paid for the importation into England, from 
America, of tar, pitch, rosin, turpentine, masts, 
yards, and bowsprits. Bancroft points out, 
however, that this relieved England of the 
necessity of depending upon Sweden for these 
essentials of the ship-builders' craft and of 
the navy. 2 

Pitkin, writing about 1817, mentions a 
society instituted in London some sixty years 
earlier "for the encouragement of arts, manu- 
factures, and commerce," offering premiums 

1 23, George II, ch. XXIX. 

1 G. Bancroft, History of the United States, II, 84. 



18 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

for the production in the colonies and expor- 
tation to England of certain articles, mostly in 
Premiums the raw state. 1 Virginia and Maryland to- 
bacco planters were favored in laws, later re- 
pealed, which prohibited tobacco culture in 
England, a prohibition which for many years 
provoked great opposition although the un- 
suitableness of English soil and climate for 
raising tobacco of the finest quality early 
appeared. 

The laws forbidding direct importation from 
the European Continent were made less severe 
by a system of rebates on the English duties. 
In most cases the duties that were paid on 
bringing merchandise into England for sub- 
sequent exportation to America were refunded 
excepting one-half of the so-called "old sub- 
Drawbacks sidy" of 5%. Therefore the charges were usu- 
Rebates anv ^ ess than the import duties for which the 
English consumer was held responsible. Fur- 
thermore, many of the articles which were 
among America's chief products, such as lum- 
ber, fish, salted provisions, and rum, were, as 
stated, not on the enumerated list and could, 

1 T. Pitkin, Statistical View of the Comvicrce of the United States, 
12. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 19 

until 1766, be shipped to any part of the world, 
provided that the shipping was carried on in 
English or colonial bottoms, whose crews were 
three-fourths English and under an English 
master, although in 1764 hides and skins were 
put into the enumeration, and iron and lumber 
for a short time. 

While an underlying motive, tending always 
to the giving of an advantage to the English 
manufacturer, merchant, or trader, can be Partially 
found for the encouragements offered the Benefits 
colonists, it must in fairness be said, that it 
was not an entirely arbitrary method that 
England adopted to secure the monopoly of 
her colonial trade in America, but, rather, 
one constructed to give the appearances of 
partially mutual benefits, which were in a 
measure realized. 

In the new land of America the tilling of 
the soil yielded the richest returns, but it 
was natural that a number of the inhabitants 
turned their attentions and energies to other 
pursuits. Various manufactures, the knowl- 
edge of which had been brought from Eng- 
land, and other European countries, sprang 

1 See particularly Ashley, Surveys, 317-3G0. 



20 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Colonial 
Manufac- 
tures 



up. The linen- and woolen-cloth makers, 
the paper-makers, the hat-makers, and the 
iron-makers began to ply their trades. Of 
course their products could not begin to 
supply all the demand of the rapidly growing 
colonies, but the effect of the increased supply 
was felt by the manufacturers in England 
and in 1731 the Board of Trade and Planta- 
tions was instructed to make a report "with 
respect to the laws made, manufactures set 
up, or trade carried on in the colonies detri- 
mental to the trade, navigation, or manu- 
factures of Great Britain." The findings of 
the Board were that the colonies north of Vir- 
ginia, having less outlet for their natural prod- 
ucts, were more likely to develop manufactures 
than those in the South. The difference in 
this regard had been observed by Sir Josiah 
Child, writing about 1668, "All our Planta- 
tions, except that of New-England, produce 
Commodities of different Natures from those 
of this Kingdom, as Sugar, Tobacco, Cocoa, 
Wool, Ginger, etc., whereas New-England pro- 
duces generally the same we have here, viz., 
Corn and Cattle." 1 In the possibility, 



1 New Discourse of Trade, 2nd ed., p. 213. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 21 

then, of the northern colonies' developing 
manufactures was a weakness in the protective 
wall being built around the English producer. 
Jealousy on the part of the British manu- 
facturer lay at the bottom of the acts for- 
mulated to restrict colonial manufacture. 
In addition to the danger of the curtailing 
of the colonial market, fears were entertained 
that the new rivals would begin exporting 
to European markets which the English were 
then supplying. As a matter of fact, the 
products of American manufacturing, with Manufac- 
the possible exception of that of hat-making, ^" e °g Sts 
supplied but a small part of the domestic Unimpor- 
needs. In Table two of Pitkin's "Statis- 
tical View" an account 1 of the articles 
exported from all the British continental col- 
onies in the year 1770, when, if ever, the 
American manufactures would have been 
developed, shows scarce half a dozen items out 
of a possible sixty-four that could rightfully 
be classed as manufactured goods. Although 
some of the laws restricting manufacturing 
had been in force long before 1770, their effect 
on the volume of production was slight and 

1 T. Pitkin, Statistical View, 2nd ed., 1817, pp. 21 ff. 



22 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Manufac- 
tures 
Restricted 



the existence of the laws would not affect the 
value of the above citation. 

The fear of competition, however, was so 
strong that, as early as the time of William 
III, when the woolen manufacture was prohib- 
ited to Ireland, pressure enough was brought 
to bear to allow the passage of an act, dras- 
tically worded in sum as follows, "After the 
First Day of December, 1669, no Wool or 
Manufactures made or mixt with Wool, being 
of the Product or Manufacture of any of the 
English Plantations in America, shall be 
loaden in any Ship or Vessel, upon any Pre- 
tence whatsoever — nor loaden upon any Horse, 
Cart, or other Carriage — to be carried out of 
the English Plantations to any other of the 
said Plantations, or to any other Place what- 
soever." 1 One of the rather vague r asons 
advanced at the time for the necessity of this 
act was that colonial industry along the lines 
most profitable in England, would "inevitably 
sink the value of lands" in England, as the 
preamble has it. The interests of the landed 
gentry and of the wealthy classes were being 
carefully guarded. No trace of reciprocal 

1 10 and 11, William III, ch. x. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 23 

benefits can be found in these enactments No Mu *uai 

• • o tvt Benefits 

restricting manufactures. Nothing in them 

can be construed as aiding anyone but the 

British manufacturer or wool-grower. 

We must not overlook the fact that while 

the inherent value of the colonies themselves 

was the main reason for which England for- ^p 01 ^ 1106 

of 

mulated these laws, the commercial struggle England's 
with France, Spain, and especially Holland, Rivalries' 
in which England was then desperately en- 
gaged, allowed the spirit of business rivalry 
to have an undue influence. S. G. Fisher, 
seemingly without complete accuracy of detail, 
remarks on this point, "The first important 
product from the colonies was tobacco from 
Virginia; and the king, who could at that time, 1 
without the aid of Parliament, impose duties 
and taxes, put a heavy duty on this tobacco 
from Virginia. The Virginians accordingly 
sent all their tobacco to Holland. This sim- 
ple instance shows both the cause and prin- 
ciple of all the navigation laws. If Holland, 
England's rival in commerce, was to reap all 

1 S. A. Morgan in the History of Parliamentary Taxation, pages 
241 ff., discusses fully the question of the right of the king to collect 
imposts. 



24 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

the advantage of Virginia's existence, of what 
value to England was Virginia?" 1 In part 
then for commercial jealousy the Virginians 
were ordered to ship only to England, where 
they were granted for a time a monopoly. 2 

Interesting it is to note the impression 

which this mercantile system made on the 

Contem- minds of the publicists of the time. Adam 

Views of Smith, apostle of the new doctrine of free 

England's trade, admitted that England was less illib- 

Commercial 

System eral than other nations in administering the 
regulations, common to all nations of the age, 
but adds, "It can not be very difficult to de- 
termine who have been the contrivers of this 
whole commercial system; not the consumer, 
we may believe, whose interest has been 
entirely neglected, but the producers whose 
interest has been so carefully attended to; 
and among the latter class our merchants 
and manufacturers have been by far the 
principal architects." 3 Montesquieu, writing 
earlier, in 1748, was in favor of the system, 

1 S. G. Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence, I, 37. 

2 See G. L. Beer, Commercial Policy, pages 21-27, for discussion 
of the tobacco monopoly and the colonial trade with Holland; and 
Origin of the British Colonial System, pp. 108 fF. 

3 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. IV, chap, viii, 3d edition. 



ENGLISH COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 25 

because "the design of the settlement was the 
extension of commerce and not the founding 
of a city or a new empire" and considered 
that any loss to a colony, was "visibly com- 
pensated by the protection of the mother 
country who defends it by her arms and sup- 
ports it by her laws." l The view of Adam 
Smith is less influenced by political consider- 
ations and the evident but unexpressed con- 
clusion is that the whole system was based 
on economic principles that would not make 
for satisfactory relations between two peoples 
such as the English and their American colo- 
nists. Montesquieu, while grasping the mo- 
tives which led to the colonization of America 
and the inception of the colonial policy, failed 
to recognize the nature and character of the 
people in America and the spirit which they 
had developed. His compensations for re- 
straint may have been sound theoretically but, 
practically, were never pressed independently 
upon the minds of the colonists to the point 
where they might be deemed material com- 
pensations from their point of view. The 
colonists at the time did not consider as "com- 

1 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, bk. XXI, chap. xxi. 



26 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

pensations" the part which England played in 
the colonial defense or the protection to shore 
and shipping which the British navy rendered. 
Rather, they looked upon the privileges, per- 
mitted by the paternal system, as rights, which 
they should enjoy without paying an extra 
price for them. 1 In America, there were those 
who believed that the best interests of the 
colonies were being subserved by the operation 
of the existing system. 2 

Such a system, developed through a cen- 
tury or more, by acts of kings and parlia- 
ments, was the one which the colonies were 
expected to accept. It was long in the evo- 
lution, but such effect as it had on the period 
immediately preceding the Revolution was as 
though it had been created as a whole at that 
time. 

1 Cf. G. E. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, 63-67. 

2 See Fisher, Struggle for American Independence, 45. Also James 
Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, p. 58. 
Cf. p. 76 {Memorial). "The validity of the general doctrine that the 
mother country and not foreigners should supply the colonies, 'pro- 
vided the Mother Country can and does supply her Plantations with 
as much as they want,' was admitted in 1762 by the Virginia Com- 
mittee of Correspondence in a letter to the colony's agent in London." 
Beer, Col Pol, 207. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CAUSES AND CHARACTER OF COLONIAL 
SMUGGLING 

All "illicit trade" and "smuggling" cannot When nas 

" Elicit 

be grouped in one class. Wherever laws are Trade " sig- 
laid down there are those who evade them if nificance? 
possible and advantage is to be gained. This 
is especially true in the case of laws requiring 
the payment of duties. But unless restrictive 
commercial measures are opposed to some 
natural and essential channel of commerce, 
the evasion of them is of little significance 
except in so far as it illustrates the weakness 
of administrative officers and the greed of the 
law-breakers for gain acquired by any means, 
foul or fair. 

In general, the evasions of those of the slight 
Acts of Trade and Navigation which aimed to , P ortance 

of Evasions 

restrict the colonial trade to England, can of Acts 
probably not be considered as of prime im- colonial 
portance. This statement is based principally Trade t0 

England 

on a study of Sheffield's "Observations on the 



28 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

Commerce of the American States." Lord 
Sheffield was so situated that he had access to 
trustworthy sources of information. Although 
he set out to prove that the trade of America 
would naturally go to England, the soundness 
of his reasons and reasonings has been proven 
by subsequent developments. 1 

Let us follow Sheffield's arguments more 
closely. He sets forth a list of commodities, 
such as shoes, stockings, hats, porcelain, 
woolens, iron and steel manufactures, glass, 
earthenware, painters' colors, and other minor 
articles, comprising nearly all the staple manu- 
factures demanded by the American market. 
Taking up each item separately, he shows 
clearly that there could be but little competi- 

1 After the close of the Revolution, Lord Sheffield published his 
"Observations on the Commerce of the American States," in which 
he advised against the admission of American shipping to the ports 
of the British West Indies. In his introduction, he says, "The ques- 
tion between us amounts only to this — Whether the British West 
Indies can be supplied with lumber and provisions at a moderate 
price, and their rum find a market without the admission of foreign 
shipping into our Colonies? and whether the British dominions can 
maintain shipping sufficient for their trade and supplies? The ques- 
tion is not, at present, whether the British dominions can supply 
the British West Indies; but whether all the world can supply them in 
British shipping?" Intro., page xiii. Theory plays but a small part 
in his argument. The facts and statistics he uses include the 
period preceding the Revolution. 

2 Op. cit., 6th edition, 1784, pp. 7-36. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 29 

tion for the British dealers in these commodi- 
ties in the American market. The figures of 
Macpherson, though referring to the ante- England 

., -iP • i • i • tne Natural 

beilum period ot restriction, may be cited in Trading 
this connection. In 1769, the official total place for 

Colonies 

value of imports into the colonies was £2,623,- 
412, of which £1,064,975 were from Great 
Britain and £789,754 were from the West 
Indies. The value of the importations from 
Africa was about £150,000, consisting prin- 
cipally of slaves and therefore negligible in 
this discussion. There remained then only 
£76,000 from "the South of Europe." * Shef- 
field next takes up the group of merchandise in 
which "there may be competition." 2 These, 
such as cheap tea, paper, silks, and fine linens, 
he asserts usually come to America through 
England, and Macpherson gives corroborating 
testimony by his citing the fact that of the 
great quantity of linen imported into London in 
1731, from Holland and Germany, "the great- 
est part is again exported to our plantations 
in America, and our factories in Africa, etc." 3 
Reasons are given below for the course 

*D. Macpherson, A nnals of Commerce, III, 571-572. 
2 Op. cit., pp. 36-54. 3 Op. cit., Ill, 182. 



30 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

which trade in these goods took; first, how- 
ever, we may notice some of the infractions of 
the English monopoly which took place. 

Traders from Dutch ports were the chief 
offenders in the matter of illegal tea importa- 
tion into the colonies. One of their methods 
was to clear for some Dutch colony with an 
American port named as a port-of-call. Their 
official papers would then protect them in a 
measure in their operations at the American 
port. Another method was for British vessels 
from Holland to enter but a part of their cargo 
with the custom-house officers at some British 
port, thus paying duty on a small part only 
of their cargo, while they "landed their entire 
Dutch Tea cargoes in the colonies." 1 The tea thus smug- 
Smuggling gj e( j j n was Q f a cnea p variety that the Eng- 
lish merchants seldom handled and they, as 
a rule, felt themselves secure in the control 
of the market for the better grade of teas. 
Much has been made of the tea smuggling of 
the colonies, but G. L. Beer comes to the con- 
clusion that the tea consumption has been 
much over-estimated and that, therefore, the 
disparity in the amount of tea said to have 

1 Beer, Col. Pol., pp. 243 f. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 31 

been consumed and the amount legally im- 
ported from Great Britain, lacks the signifi- 
cance usually attached to it. 1 

Some French manufactures were smuggled 
into the colonies from the French islands, in 
connection with the trade presently to be de- 
scribed, but it is doubtful whether their 
amount was great. 

England's position in the mercantile world Advantages 

had become a dominant one and to her came ° . ng 1S 

Ports 

the products of all parts of the world. 
American vessels seeking general cargoes would 
find them more easily in the ports of England 
than in the ports of any other nation. Fur- 
thermore, British merchants were more dis- 
posed to give long credit to American mer- 
chants than were other foreign business men. 
The principal reason, however, to cause the 
trade of the colonies in many of the above 
mentioned articles to go to England was the 
accepted fact that England could produce 
better quality at a lower price. 

Macpherson's figures, quoted above, es- 
tablish the fact that, either in spite of, or 
because of, natural tendencies, the colonists 

1 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 245 f, note 2. 



32 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

did get their legal imports chiefly from Eng- 
Growth land. For this there could have been but two 
Between explanations: first, that they found it to their 
England advantage from a business standpoint; or, 
nies Due to second, they felt constrained to do so on 
Natural account of the regulations of the Acts of 

Causes 

Trade and Navigation. Lord Sheffield, as 
trustworthy as any contemporary observer, 
says, "The preference formerly given (to 
England) was not the effect of our restrictions ; 
nothing was easier to the Americans than to 
evade them ; and it is well known that from the 
first, * * they uniformly did evade them when- 
ever they found it to their interest." 1 Moral 
scruples had no more weight with the colonists 
in connection with the general import trade 
than they had in connection with the West 
Indies trade and we shall see that smuggling 
existed in the latter whenever the colonists 
found it to their advantage. We may there- 
fore eliminate, to a large degree, the trade regu- 
lations as a coercing force in the English trade 
with the colonies. 

Many great staples which England produced 
had overcome French, German, and Dutch 

1 Op. cit., 234. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 33 

competitors in their home markets and it is 
reasonable to assume that the Americans 
would find it to their advantage to buy from 
the same producers. Even during and after 
the Revolution the advantage of trading in 
England was so great that James Madison 
wrote in 1785, "Our Merchants are almost all 
connected with that country and that only." l 

We must therefore reiterate our former 
statement that, in all probability, the evasion 
of those Acts of Trade and Navigation which 
purposed to confine so much of the colonial 
import trade to England, was of compara- 
tively minor significance only in the develop- 
ment of the revolutionary spirit of the colo- 
nists. Of course, exceptional cases existed but 
they are traceable usually to special causes of 
slight general importance. Probably the total 
amount of merchandise smuggled in, in con- 
nection with the European trade, was but a 
small part of the total volume of business. 

In our discussion of the development of 
England's commercial system, we have pur- 
posely failed to mention the Molasses Act, Molasses 
passed in 1733. As an efficient restrictive Act 

James Madison, "Works," I, 156; Writings, Hunt's ed., II, 147. 



34 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

measure, its influence was naught; as an in- 
centive to illicit trade, its importance was 
greater than that of any other trade regu- 
lating act, and it is its evasion principally 
rather than its effect on legitimate commerce 
that we are now to consider. From the 
very nature of the commerce at which it 
struck, its observance would have been well- 
nigh impossible. Briefly, the Molasses Act 
laid prohibitive duties upon the importation 
from the foreign Sugar Islands into the 
American colonies of rum, molasses, and sugar. 1 
We have seen that the chief products of 
the New England colonies were lumber and 
fish, and of the Middle colonies, agricultural 
Disadvan- staples. These two sections, especially the 
E^Tortin f° rmer > were a ^ so great ship-building and 
staples to ship-owning centers. Of their products, part 
went to England, but the market was re- 
stricted, for, during the reign of Charles II, 
statutes were passed in behalf of the British 
farmers, practically prohibiting the importa- 
tion of grain and meat into England, and the 

^'Molasses Act was to continue in force five years; but it was 
five times renewed and by the Sugar Act of 1764 was made per- 
petual." Macdonald, Documentary Source Book of American His- 
tory, 1908. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 35 

demand there for fish and lumber was not 
great enough to equal the supply. There re- 
mained a vast unconsumed surplus in the 
hands of the colonists for which, again, in the 
British West Indies, there was not a sufficient 
demand . 

Of the courses then open to the colonists, Alternative 

Courses 

either was likely to involve legal difficulties, open 

First, they could manufacture for themselves, 

— a procedure not only legally restricted 1 but 

economically unwise if not impossible. Second, 

they could export to a third market, which 

was both a natural and a ready market — the 

foreign West Indies islands — but from which 

a return cargo was by the Molasses Act sought 

to be interdicted. The second course was the 

one adopted and the reasons seem to justify Selection 

the selection. 

The colonies depended on England for 
their manufactured goods, but the value of 
the products exported in return always left 
the balance of trade in favor of England. 
Money was therefore essential and enough of 
it could not be obtained in the British West 

1 10 and 11 William III, chap. X., 19; 5 George II, chap. XXII; 
23 George II, chap. XXIX. 



36 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

Indies. The foreign islands were eager for 
the colonial products and had an abundance 
of money which their direct trading with 
Europe yielded. From them, and from the 
trade from the south of Europe, presently to 
be referred to, the colonists obtained the 
needed specie. But still more from the Is- 
lands they obtained those products on which 

Colonists obtaining their specie ultimately depended. 

Could rp^ e mm a nd th e molasses which the Boston 

Secure 

Needed and Rhode Island distilleries soon made into 
Only on the rum, were re-exported to Africa and in return 
Basis of the were brought back great numbers of slaves. 

West Indies & b 

Trade The slave market, both of the Islands and of 

the Southern American colonies, was never 
over-supplied. Slave labor was of the greatest 
moment in the production of the South's 
great staples. Rum was practically the only 
commodity that could have been exchanged 
for the African slaves and it is in this consid- 
eration that the Southern colonies became de- 
pendent on the trade between the Northern col- 
onies and the West Indies, British and foreign. 
The money derived from the West Indies 
trade did not long remain in America, for the 
balance of trade between England and Amer- 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 37 

ica was, as stated above, always in favor of 
England and to a very large degree. No divi- 
sion of opinion among contemporary or mod- 
ern writers is discernible on this point. 
Colden, in 1723, asserted that money coming 
from the West Indies "seldom continues six 
months in the Province, before it is remitted 
for England." 1 He carried his later obser- 
vations to the logical conclusion by declaring, Final 

-. n . (it • • i i • Destination 

in 1764, It is evident to a demonstration of Money 
that the more Trade the Colonies in North Denved 

from West 

America have with the Foreign Colonies, the indies 
more they consume of the British Manufac- ra e 
tures." 2 Franklin's explanation of the differ- 

1 Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, V, 686. 

2 Ibid. VII, 612. In 1767, Dennis de Berdt, agent for Massa- 
chusetts in London, presented a memorial to the Board of Trade, 
in which he said, "To put any difficulties on the American Trade, 
will inevitably diminish our exports to that Country, from their in- 
ability to pay the Merchants for the Manufactures imported by 
them, which inability will be the same whether the people in Amer- 
ica resolve to take goods or not." A. B. Hart, History told by Con- 
temporaries, II, No. 146; quoting from "Papers relating to Public 
Events in Massachusetts preceding the Revolution (1856)." 

Compare argument of John Ashley, a Barbados planter, who, in a 
pamphlet, "Some Observations on a direct exportation of sugar from the 
British Islands, in a letter from a gentleman in Barbadoes to his friend 
in London" (Dec. 21, 1734) writes, "The Planters will never want a 
Supply of British Goods when they have the wherewithal to pay 
for them; and the more Markets they have to take off their Products, 
the better able will they be to pay for what they want, and the more 
they will take off; and such Supplies will come from Great-Britain, 



38 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

ence in the value of the English commodities 
imported into Pennsylvania, £500,000, and 
the value of those articles exported directly to 
England, £40,000, was that the balance due 
England was made up by the trade with the 
English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish 
West Indies; and this explanation may be 
considered as typical for the. New England 
colonies as well. 

On their side of the case, the French 
Islands were prohibited from sending rum 
to France for fear of interfering with the 
French brandy trade. As it was essential 
for the islanders to dispose of their greatest 
product, rum, and particularly molasses, be- 
came the chief articles offered on advantageous 
terms in exchange for the products of the 
North. 

Of equal force was the economic necessity 
which compelled the continental colonies to 
export to the foreign West Indies. This 
arose principally from the nature of the com- 
modities produced. Disregarding the influ- 

some how or other, and in Time, either the Planters will send Effects 
to their Factors in Great-Britain for them, or they will buy them of 
the British Merchants' Factors in the Islands, as they find most for 
their Convenience and Advantage." op. cit., page 17. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 39 

ence of the legal hindrances to European 
trade noted above, we may assume that the 
supply of commodities would have sought the 
market where there was the greatest demand. 
The following statistics show conclusively West 

Tf|H I AC 

that the demand of the West Indies was far p ract i C aiiy 
in excess of that of England. New England the 0nl y 

Adequate 

sent to the Islands, in 1770, staves and head- Market 

ings and hoops for barrels and hogsheads to the p 1 ? 11 * / e 

value of about £70,000, or about three times as 

much as was sent to England. Bread and flour, 

principally from Pennsylvania, to the amount 

of 23,449 tons were exported to the Islands 

in comparison with 263 tons sent to England. 

In the shipping of fish, we find that, of the 

better, dried fish, 431,386 quintals went to the 

south of Europe, legally permissible, 206,081 

quintals to the West Indies, and only 22,086 

to Great Britain. Of the products of the fish- ^P ^" 

^ of F shenes 

eries, however, there remained a great quan- 
tity of low grade pickled fish which could find 
an adequate market only in the West Indies, 
which consumed 29,582 barrels of a total 
30,06s. 1 In 1778, John Adams observed, 

1 Pitkin, Statistical View, 2nd ed., 1817, table II, furnishes these 
figures. 



40 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

"One part (the low grade) of our fish went to 
the West Indies for rum, and molasses to be 
distilled into rum, which injured our health 
and our morals; the other part (the high 
grade) went to Spain and Portugal for gold 
and silver, almost the whole of which went 
to London." * It is readily seen that the 
profit of the fisheries was dependent on a 
market for the whole catch, and that if the 
foreign West Indies market had been taken 
away, the success of the whole business would 
uccess nave been jeopardized. Minot states the 

of Fisheries J ^ 

Dependent possible result of this, succinctly, in the fol- 

on ^V^cst 

indies lowing, "The business of the fishery * * was 
Trade a j- ^his time estimated at £164,000 per annum; 

the vessels employed in it, which would be 
nearly useless, at £100,000; the provisions 
used in it, the casks for packing fish, and other 
articles, at £22,700 and upwards; to all of 
which there was to be added the loss of the 
advantage of sending lumber, horses, provi- 
sions and other commodities to the foreign 
plantations as cargoes, * * and the dismissing 
of 5,000 seamen from their employment." 2 

1 Sparks, Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, IV, 273. 

2 G. R. Minot, History of Massachusetts, II, 147, quoting from the 
arguments of Mauduit, the agent of Massachusetts in England. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 41 

Except for the indirect advantage in con- 
nection with the supply of slaves, noted above, 
and which should not be underemphasized, 
the dependence of the Carolinas, Virginia, 
and the other Southern colonies upon the situation 
West Indies trade was not of importance. c olo n" es ern 
Their great natural products, rice and tobacco, Different 
except during short intervals, were afforded 
by law markets that were extensive enough 
to demand all their surplus production, and 
from these markets they could draw back 
money or manufactured goods in exchange. 
The balance of trade being more nearly equal, 
their demand for gold and silver could be 
supplied without recourse to the West Indies. 
To interfere, however, with the trade that was 
being carried on between the foreign West 
Indies islands and the northern American 
colonies would have been an interruption 
fraught with the gravest results. From the 
very nature of the commodities most promi- 
nent in the trade and from the geographical 
position of the two sections, the one party Molasses 
in the transactions supplied the only possible R g mains 
adequate market for the products of the Unenforced 
other party, while, in the situation, the mate- 



42 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

rial life and growth of each was largely depend- 
ent on what it received from the other. l Had 
the markets of Europe been wholly unre- 
stricted, the larger ships required and the diffi- 
culty of the voyage would have served as 
hindrances to trade, while these hindrances 
were almost entirely lacking in trade between 
the Islands and America. As the Molasses 
Act remained unenforced, this natural trade 
was allowed to develope to the fullest, and 
each year's non-enforcement was making more 
difficult the situation which the British cus- 
toms-officials had to face, finally, in 1763. It 
is a question whether the term "smuggling" 
is a proper one to apply to the evasions of the 
Molasses Act that occurred previous to that 
time, inasmuch as, with the exception of a 

1 A concise statement of the interdependence of the North American 
and West Indies trade is given as follows by Governor Pownall; 
"The West India islands produce sugar, molasses, cotton, etc.; 
they want the materials for building and mechanics, and many the 
necessaries of food and raiment: The lumber, hides, the fish, flour, 
provisions, live-stock, and horses, produced in the northern colonies 
on the continent, must supply the islands with these requisites. On 
the other hand, the sugar and molasses of the sugar islands is become 
a necessary intermediate branch of the North American trade and 
fisheries. The produce of the British sugar islands cannot supply 
both Great Britain and North America with the necessary quantity; 
this makes the molasses of the foreign sugar islands also necessary to 
the present state of the North American trade." Thomas Pownall, 
Administration of the Colonies, 4th Edition, 1768, London, pp. 5 f. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 43 

brief period of activity about 1760 .custom- 
houses ignored or winked at the importations 
from the West Indies. This long non-enforce- 
ment of the act directed against the natural 
trade of the colonies, enables Mellen Chamber- 
lain to present the position of the colonists 
when the enforcement of the Sugar Act was 
imminent, in these words, "The other party 
(the colonists), basing their claim on natural 
equity and long enjoyment, wished to retain 
it (the West Indies trade)." ! 

The duties 2 which the Molasses Act sought 
to levy on imports to the colonies from the 
foreign West Indies were such as to have the 
effect of an absolute prohibition of trade be- interests 
tween them. They were intended to be West 

regulative and not revenue-producing. The Indies 

Considered 
sole raison d'etre of the act was to protect the of Greater 

interests of the British West Indies. The ^ po £ ance 

than those 

fact that they operated to the disadvantage of American 
of the British colonies in North America to 
an infinitely greater degree did not alter the 
determination of the framers of the act, al- 

1 J. Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, VI, 23-24. 

1 The duties which the Molasses Act sought to levy were, — On 
rum and spirits, 9d. per gallon; on molasses and syrups, 6d. per 
gallon; on sugars, 5s. per cwt. 



44 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Reasons 
for Favors 
Shown 
British 
Islands 



though it is open to conjecture whether the 
recognition of this fact did not furnish partial 
grounds for the non-enforcement of the act. 
Perhaps, too, a tardy realization of the fact 
that its enforcement would lead to a lessening 
of the ability of the Americans to purchase 
from English merchants was of some weight 
in the non-enforcement. England always con- 
sidered the interest of the British islands as 
of greater importance than that of her North 
American possessions. The Islands were 
deemed economically much more useful to 
the mother country by reason of the nature of 
their resources. The great plantations were 
owned by English gentlemen most of whom 
resided in England and who were in close 
touch with the government and thus more 
likely to have their complaints listened to. 
We may again quote Beer, who gives as the 
standard by which England measured the 
value of her colonies, the ability of the colony 
to "produce commodities that the mother 
country would otherwise have to buy from 
foreigners." "Hence greater stress was laid on 
colonies as sources of supply than as markets 
for British manufacturers." Judged by this 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 45 

standard, the West Indies, except for naval standards 
supplies, would rank as much more important colonial"** 
than the continental, especially the Northern, Value s 
colonies. Bancroft describes the commercial 
activity of the West Indies as that of "bees 
carrying all their honey to England." This 
method of comparing colonial values was in 
vogue at the time of the passage of the Molas- 
ses Act and continued until about 1763, when 
England began to esteem her manufacturing 
interests more highly and to consider the 
colony affording the best market as the one 
deserving of the greater consideration. Of 
this somewhat altered view the dictum of 
Sheffield, above cited, is evidence. 

Nowhere was there a keener realization of 
the favored position of the West Indies than 
in the Islands themselves, and among those 
financially interested in them. This sense 
of security in governmental favor reached 
such a point that the attempt was actually 
made first to prohibit in terms most of the 

^ Efforts of 

trade of the North American colonies with the the British 
foreign islands. A bill towards this end i n ^ es to 
passed the House of Commons but memo- Confine 
rials to the House of Lords by the colonial Themselves 



46 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Organiza- 
tion of 
Customs 
Service 



assemblies prevented its final passage. 1 The 
question of why the Molasses Act remained 
unenforced is one principally of conjecture 
unless we seek the explanation in the weak 
organization of the customs service. Since 
1C96, the Board of Trade and Plantations was 
in general charge of colonial affairs. It was a 
sub-committee of the Privy Council. The 
Board received most of its information from 
the governors of the provinces, who were be- 
tween two fires in the matter of giving in- 
formation concerning evasions of law. The 
governors and the two Surveyors-General of 
Customs, 2 North and South, were assisted in the 
administration of the laws by the "naval 
officers" and the collectors, with surveyors and 
searchers at each principal port. The personnel 
of the service at best was one hardly com- 
manding much respect. The collectorships were 
sometimes delegated, the appointees remaining 
in England and entrusting the actual work to 
deputies. While the collectors were never 



1 Pennsylvania Archives. Series IV, Vol. I, pp. 482 f. and 493 ff. 

2 Good accounts of the organization of the customs service are 
found in Scharf & Westcott's History of Philadelphia, III, 1800, ff., in 
G. E. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, 72, and in G. L. Beer, 
British Commercial Policy, pages 123 ff. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 47 

popular, it is significant that acts of violence 
were uncommon before 1755 and reached their 
worst after 1763. 

It was only with the connivance of the 
custom-house officials that much of the illegal 
trade was possible. The connivance is, how- 
ever, greatly illuminated by the discretionary 
power conferred upon the collectors by a 
statute of Charles II, 1 to accept partial pay- 
ment of the statutory duties as full payment. 
The methods, however, employed by the smug- 
glers were legion, false clearance papers, par- 
tial entries, and mis-labeled packages being Connivance 
some of the ways by which illicit entry was 
made by the larger vessels. The bays and 
rivers afforded ample opportunities for the 
smaller vessels to run in their entire cargoes 
without detection. Governor Bernard of 
Massachusetts wrote in 1764, "If conniving at 
foreign sugars and molasses and Portugal 
wines and fruits is to be reckoned corruption, 
there never was, I believe, an uncorrupt custom 
officer in America until within twelve months." 
From the same source we have the following 
statement concerning the 15,000 hogsheads of 

1 13 and 14 Ch. II, c. 11, §§ xvii, xviii. 



48 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

molasses imported into Massachusetts in 1763, 
"all of which, except less than 500, came from 
Ports which are now Foreign." 1 It was esti- 
mated that the duty on molasses, if collected, 
would amount to £25,000 a year. 2 For the 
officials, however, it should be said that smug- 
gling was a less heinous crime in those days 
than later. In England there existed a great 
system of illicit trade with which were believed 
Attitude to be connected "gentlemen of rank and 
Smuggling character in London." 3 In America, the long 

in England j ax jty in enforcement of the Molasses Act led 

and 

America to its being considered as a dead letter and 

with its evasions are connected such names as 
that of Fanueil] 4 in Boston. 

The violation of trade regulations in con- 
nection with the West Indies trade, that resulted 
in the most serious and momentous conse- 
Contraband quences arose at the time of the Seven Years' 
Trade with \\r ar between England and France. The 
American colonies and the French islands 

1 From Quincy's Mass. Reports, pp. 423 f., and Bernard's Select 
Letters on the Trade and Government of America in the years 1763-1768, 
p. 10. 

2 John Adams, Works, X, 348. 

3 Fisher, Op. cit., 51. 

4 W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, II, 
620; cf. pp. 612 and 627 f. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 49 

had become so interdependent that at the out- 
break of hostilities between their mother 
countries, the commercial intercourse between 
them did not cease, notwithstanding the fact 
that at the beginning of the war distinct 
measures were passed by both the colonial 
and the Home governments to break up the 
trade. 1 Finally, in 1757, after having been 
urged to put the colonial food-products into 
"the enumeration," Parliament forbade, dur- 
ing the period of the war, the export of any 
food supplies, except fish and rice, to any place 
outside the British dominions. The French 
were entirely dependent upon the northern 
products for their chief food supplies. The 
American colonies were called upon to supply 
financial aid for England 2 which was waging 
war principally in their behalf, and the colo- 
nies needed then, if ever, the West Indies trade 
from which they drew their chief profit and 
so much of their specie. Although the con- 

1 For the interesting acts of the colonial assemblies, see Beer, Colo" 
nial Policy, pp. 77 f. 

2 The preamble to the "Sugar Act" states that the revenues, 
prescribed by it, are levied because "it is just and necessary, that a 
Revenue be raised in" his American colonies "for defraying the 
Expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same." — 4 George 
III, chap. xv. 



50 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

tinuance of the trade by the Americans may 

have indicated a break in the sympathy of the 

colonies with England, it is fair to conjecture 

Motives at that a desire for business profits and the eco- 

the Bottom . .. » .-, .. » ,, 

of Contra- nomic necessity tor the continuance ot the 

band Trade trade, were the motives at bottom. This 

trade with the enemy was carried on in two 

ways: either with the French directly under 

"Flags of Truce," or indirectly through the 

neutral islands of other nations. 

The "Flags of Truce " were originally issued 

" Fla s s of by the colonial governors for the purpose of 
Truce" . 

allowing vessels to exchange prisoners with 

the French. This system had already begun 
in the earlier wars of the century. Many 
abuses of the system arose. With the pris- 
oners was carried merchandise which was also 
exchanged, and when the exchange of prisoners 
was effected, the permits were not surrendered 
but were used for subsequent expeditions. 
Pennsylvania was perhaps the worst offender 
in the abuse of this practice. Governor Denny 
publicly sold these permits to the highest 
bidders and there was such a large number of 
ships engaged in this trade that James Ham- 
ilton, Lieutenant-Governor, on information of 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 51 

Sir Jeffrey Amherst that provisions were 
being collected in Philadelphia to send to the 
French fleet and army in the West Indies, di- 
rected the Collector of Customs at Philadel- 
phia to hold there all ships except those re- 
leased by special warrant. 1 Rhode Island was 
second only to Pennsylvania in making pos- 
sible the violations of the privileges of the 
"Flags of Truce." In Virginia, the Lieuten- 
ant-Governor was offered four hundred guin- 
eas if he "would license a Flag of Truce," but 
he refused the offer. 2 

The ease with which the indirect trade with indirect 

i Trade with 

the French was conducted was greatly en- the French 
hanced by the practice of the European nations 
of allowing the commerce of certain ports in 
their West Indies possessions to be free to 
the whole world. Holland had as a "free 
port" the island of St. Eustatius, Denmark 
allowed to St. Thomas entire commercial 
freedom, while France and England possessed 
such ports in St. Domingo, and in Jamaica 
and Dominica. The evident purpose of such 

1 Pennsylvania Archives, Series IV, Vol. Ill, 144. A general em- 
bargo was laid by Pennsylvania to break up the "Flag of Truce" 
trade, but it was of short duration. 

2 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 90. 



52 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

a feature in an otherwise stringent system was 
to make possible the drawing away of trade 
from commercial rivals. The purpose was 
undoubtedly accomplished but, at the same 
time, smuggling was greatly abetted thereby, 
and the Dutch and Spanish became inter- 
mediaries in ui-e illicit trade between the 
English and the French. 

England's undoubted supremacy on the 
sea forced the French to throw open their 
ports to the Dutch, against whom they were 
usually closed. The British vice-admiralty 
courts in the West Indies then had a legal or 
semi -legal ground on which to justify the 
seizure of Dutch ships as carriers of contra- 
band of war under the provisions of the "Rule 
of 1756." The strength of the British navy, 
backed by the authority of the courts, was 
sufficient to break up to a great extent the 
part which the Dutch were playing in the 
transportation of provisions from the Ameri- 
can colonists to the French. 

Another go-between was found in the 
Spanish settlement of Monte Christi. As a 
market or as a source of supply, this port 
could not of itself have been attractive to 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 53 

American shipping interests, but the cause of Indirect 

Trade 
the sudden growth of its commerce lay in the Through 

fact that it was contiguous to French terri- the spams 
tory. To make the conduct of business more 
easy, crown subjects from North America 
resided at the port and small French vessels 
were employed to transfer the provisions 
directly to French soil, so that the trade 
could almost be classed as a direct trade with 
the enemy. Its great extent is attested by 
the observations of the commanders of British 
war-vessels sent to investigate. At the time 
at which His Majesty's sloop, Viper, was at 
Monte Christi on Feb. 5, 1759, twenty-eight 
of the twenty-nine ships there were from the 
North American colonies. In May, 1761, a 
Captain Hinxman reported that, of fifty ves- 
sels in port, thirty -six were from North Amer- 
ica. 1 Governor Haldane of Jamaica made 
affidavits on June 9, 1759 that at times from 
one hundred to one hundred and twenty North 
American vessels were at Monte Christi. 2 
There could have been but one object back of 



1 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 98, note 2, quoting from the 
Board of Trade Papers and Home Office Papers. 

2 Ibid., 99, note 4. 



54 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

the visits of all these vessels to this port at this 
particular time. 
British The objections raised by the British civil 

to Trade anc ^ military authorities, both before and after 
with French j^e Parliamentary Act of 1757, were natural 
and reasonable. The supplying of the enemy 
with provisions and the sinews of war, unob- 
tainable elsewhere, was inherently treason- 
able, and by the Act of 1757, was also a form 
of smuggling. Further, the exportation of 
large quantities of staples, such as flour and 
bread, diminished the supply in America when 
the demand was abnormally large on account 
of the quartering of a great army of British and 
colonial troops. The attending rise in prices 
made it cheaper for the military commissary 
to import supplies from England, yet the 
elements of risk and delay in the long car- 
riage rendered this undesirable, except when 
the necessity was urgent. G. L. Beer has 
ferreted out a seemingly inexhaustible mass 
of evidence from the official papers and corre- 
spondence in the English Public Record Office, 
all of which seems to show that the complaints 
of the officials were warranted by the facts. 1 

1 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, chapter vi and notes. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 55 

Their alarm was great enough to cause the 
establishment of a general embargo, whose 
life however was short. 1 

Pitt on Aug. 23, 1760, summed up the matter 
of illegal trade with the enemy in his instruc- 
tions to Provincial Governors in these words: 
"The Commanders of His Majesty's Forces 
and Fleets, in North America and the West 
Indies, having transmitted repeated and cer- 
tain Intelligence of an illegal and most perni- 
cious Trade, carried on by The King's Sub- 
jects in North America, and the West Indies, 
as well to the French Islands, as to the French 
Settlements on the Continent of America 
... by which the Enemy is, to the greatest 
Reproach and Detriment of Government, 
supplied with Provisions, and other Neces- 
saries, whereby They are principally, if not 
alone, enabled to sustain and protract this 
long and expensive War; ... In order there- 
fore to put the most speedy Stop to such Prac- 
tices ... so highly repugnant to the Honor 
and Wellbeing of this Kingdom, it is His 
Majesty's express Will that you do forthwith 
make the strictest Enquiry into the State of 
this dangerous and ignominious Trade." 2 

1 Beer. Col. Pol., 113; cf. 85. 2 Gray, in Quincy' a Mass. Reports, 407. 



56 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

To attempt to explain the motives which 

prompted the colonies to engage in this 

treasonable form of illicit trade, by ascribing 

them to a developing spirit of independence, 

Political would call up a series of counter arguments 

Arguments 

Against worth considering. In the first place, the col- 
Contraband on j s t s were simultaneously and voluntarily 
French aiding England with troops and money in her 
struggle with France in North America, al- 
though it is true that this aid was rendered 
often with reluctance. In the second place, the 
final triumph of France in America, toward 
which this contraband trade aided, would sim- 
ply mean the transferring of the nominal 
authority over the colonies from England to 
France, whereas we have seen that the natural 
relations, both political and commercial, of the 
colonies were with England. 1 And, finally, it 
may be assumed that the colonists recognized 
that if the English succeeded in completely 
breaking the French power in America, there 
would be removed the need which the colonies 

1 Jeremiah Dummer, agent for Massachusetts in London from 
1710 to 1721, "shows how early and passionate among the English 
colonies in America was the dread of the American power of France," 
declaring," that those colonies can never be easy or happy, 'whilst the 
French are masters of Canada.' " G. E. Howard, Preliminaries of the 
Revolution, VIII, 6, quoting Tyler, Am. Lit., II, 119. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 57 

had always felt for British protection. In 
view of these three considerations, it appears 
that every possible political argument would 
lead to the offering of every aid by the colo- 
nists to England. It must be the assumption, 
then, that economic reasons urged more 
strongly the continuance of the trade than 
political considerations opposed it. 

The motives underlying the trade with the Real 
French narrow down to one of two or to a tt ! 17 ? 5 . 

Underlying 

combination of two. Undoubtedly, the per- Contraband 
sonal gain accruing to those engaged in the 
trade, although it was not without risk, was 
the primary motive with the individual trader; 
but the tolerance and approval of the public 
needed a more general economic basis and this 
is to be found in the same reasons already 
advanced, making the trade between the West 
Indies and North America essential to each. 
To this may now be added the negative but 
strengthening circumstance that the general 
acceptance of the Molasses Act as a dead letter 
had destroyed the possibility that its evasion 
would cause any moral feeling of guilt or 
wrong-doing in the minds of the offenders or 
of the public. 



58 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

The unabashed manner in which the colo- 
nists persisted in their trade with the enemy- 
served to bring the entire matter of illicit 
trade to the attention of the British people 
and government. Non-enforcement and gen- 
eral smuggling had caused the West Indies trade 
to take on features of a tolerated evil, and now 
it was the particular kind of smuggling that 
aided the enemy, which caused the British 
government to make almost the first serious 
effort to break up all kinds of illicit trade. 
A customs service which never had attempted 
to enforce the Molasses Act could not be 
whipped into an efficient working force when 
the crisis demanded it. The military arm, 
which was the first to feel vitally the crippling 
effect of the illegal trade with the enemy, 
Recognition was the first to call to the assistance of the 
anceT^Aid revenue officers the powerful British navy, 
of Royal it s co-operation seemed to strengthen the 
Customs purpose of the regular custom-house officers, 
Service w ^ ^ e net resu it that the effort to col- 
lect the duties prescribed by the Molasses 
Act, with a view to a breaking up of the 
trade with the French, caused the revenue 
from molasses to increase from the aver- 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 59 

age previous to 1755 of £259 to £1189 in 
1761. l 

This attempt at enforcement of the pro- 
visions of the Molasses Act caused the seiz- 
ure of many vessels trading illegally and 
this, in turn, led to a conflict of authority 
between the vice-admiralty courts and the Admiralty 

Courts 

courts of common law. The former strove, vs . 
generally speaking, to uphold the actions of ^ omm , on 

LaW covins 

the customs officers, and with them rested 
the legal right. The common law courts 
were influenced strongly by local prejudice 2 

1 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 115. 

2 Cf . Thomas Pownall on this point: "Under the third article, I 
fear experience can well say, how powerfully, even in courts, the 
influence of the leaders of party have been felt in matters between 
individuals. But in these popular governments, and where every 
executive officer is under a dependence for a temporary, wretched, 
and I had almost said, arbitrary support to the deputies of the 
people, — it will be no injustice to the frame of human nature, either 
in the person of the judges, of the juries, or even the popular lawyer 
to suggest, how little the crown, or the rights of government, when 
opposed to the spirit of democracy, or even to the passions of the 
populace, has to expect of that support, maintainence, and guardian- 
ship, which the courts are even by the constitution supposed to hold 
for the crown. Nor would it be any injustice to any of the colonies 
just to remark in this place, how difficult, if ever practicable it is, 
in any of their courts of common law to convict any person of a 
violation of the laws of trade, or in any matter of crown revenue. 
Some of our acts of parliament direct the prosecution and punish- 
ment of the breach of the laws of trade, to take its course in the 
courts of Vice-admiralty: And it has been thought by a very great 
practitioner . . . that there should be an advocate appointed to 



60 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

and feeling and the desire to please those 
from whom the judges' salaries were received, 
— the people. A jury that would convict was 
difficult to find. Thus we read of the Col- 
lector at New York arguing even in 1739 that 
the case arising from the seizure of gun- 
powder and molasses, imported illegally from 
St. Eustatia, should be tried before the Ad- 
miralty Court instead of before the common 
law court, and apprehending the unlikelihood 
of securing a favorable verdict from "a Jury 
who perhaps are equally concerned in carry- 
ing on an illicit trade, and its hardly to be ex- 
pected that they will find each other guilty." 1 
This speaks eloquently of the general preva- 
lence of illicit trading and the temper of the 
public mind concerning it. The admiralty 
courts themselves were not above suspicion 
as is witnessed by the complaints sent to 

each court from Great Britain, who, having a salary independent of 
the people, should be directed and empowered to prosecute in that 
court, not only every one who was an offender, but also every officer 
of the customs, who through neglect, collusion, oppression, or any 
other breach of his trust became such." Thomas Pownall, The 
Administration of the Colonies, 4th ed., pp. 108 ff. 

1 A. B. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. II, 
No. 87, quoting " Documents relative to the Colonial History of the 
State of New York," VI, 154-155. It was the illegal importation of 
gunpowder, contrary to the Act of 1663, and the enforcement of that 
act, which seem to have interested the Collector most in this case. 



CAUSES AND CHARACTER 61 

General Amherst concerning the courts in 
South Carolina, New York, and Pennsylvania. 1 
So established, in fact, in public sentiment 
was the trade with the foreign West Indies, 
that as the war drew toward its close, prom- 
ising the return to normal conditions, the at- 
tempts to collect the duties imposed by the 
Molasses Act appear even to have been re- 
laxed. 2 

1 Cf. G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 126, notes 1, 2, 3, 4. 

2 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 230, and n. 3; cf. 116. 



CHAPTER IV 

POLITICAL SITUATION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

General The situation which existed in the customs 
Situation service and the admiralty courts, which the 
as Revealed prevalence of smuggling during the French 

by Contra- 
band Trade War caused to be exposed, was hardly one to 

with French brmg delight to the heart of the British gov- 
ernment. The statement of Howard, a Rhode 
Island lawyer with Tory leanings, presents 
what may be considered as the British view. 
He said, "It is notorious, that smuggling * had 
well nigh become established in some of the 
colonies. Acts of parliament had been uni- 
formly] dispensed with by those whose duty 
it was to execute them; corruption * had almost 
grown into a system; courts of admiralty * 
became subject to mercantile influence; and 
the king's] revenue sacrificed to the venality 
and perfidiousness of courts and officers." 1 

i A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, to his Friend in Rhode- 
Island, containing Remarks upon a Pamphlet, entitled, "The Rights 
of Colonies Examined." (Newport, 17G5). Reprinted in Hart, 
American History Told by Contemporaries, II, sec. 139. 



POLITICAL SITUATION 63 

It was this state of things that the ad- 
ministrative measures of Grenville, described 
in the chapter following, were designed to 
reform. At the same time at which the discour- 
aging facts in connection with the status and 
evasions of the Acts of Trade and Navigation, 
and especially of the Molasses Act, were 
brought into the limelight in England by the 
illegal trade with the French, the British Ex- British 

chequer was confronted with a serious short- „ ° 
1 Revenue 

age in funds. Although the colonies had for 
the most part paid a proportionate amount of 
the enormous sum expended in their defense, 1 
the maintenance of the vast domain, acquired 
at the cessation of hostilities, involved the 
annual expenditure of many more millions for 
which experience had taught the voluntary aid 

1 Lord Sheffield gives the following items of expenditure by Great 
Britain on account of the American colonies, 

By the war of 1739 £31,000,000 

By the war of 1755 71,500,000 

Total £102,500,000 

Doubling this amount by the £100,000,000 expended in the war of 
the Revolution, he adds, " And thus have we expended a larger sum in 
defending and retaining our Colonies, than the value of all the mer- 
chandise which we have ever sent them; we have, in a great measure, 
disbursed this enormous sum, to secure the possession of a country 
which yielded us no revenue, and whose commerce called for but 
£1,655,092 of the manufactures of Britain." Appendix, page 301. 



64 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

of the colonies could not be depended upon. 
Revenue from some source was a necessity. 

The Grenville Act of 1764 sought to raise 
this revenue largely from that part of the trade 
of the colonies which it was apparent was 
the most flourishing and which had been 

" Sugar yielding practically no returns in duties. The 

Act " 

"Sugar Act" amended the Molasses Act, im- 
posing a new duty on refined sugar and lower- 
ing the duty on molasses and syrups. 1 As 
if to offset possible and expected resistance 

Revenue from the colonists, the use to which this reve- 
nue could be put was specifically provided. 
It was not to be used for the general expenses 
of the British Exchequer but only for the 
expenses in part of maintaining the military 
establishment in the colonies, while three years 
later the Townshend duties were to be devoted 
to those of administering justice and for the 
support of civil government in the colonies, 



1 The duties imposed by the "Sugar Act" were, "For every hundred 
weight avoirdupois of such foreign white or clayed sugars, one pound, 
two shillings, over and above all other duties imposed by any former 
act of parliament." Upon molasses the act declared, "That in lieu 
and instead of the rate and duty imposed by the said act upon melassea 
and syrups, there shall, from and after . . . (Sept. 29, 1764) be raised, 
levied, collected, and paid unto His Majesty, for and upon every gallon 
of melasses or syrups, . . . the sum of three pence." 



Measures 



POLITICAL SITUATION 65 

and any surplus could be legally used only 
for the support and protection of the colonies. 1 
To aggravate the situation, England was 
in an unsettled political condition over the J 11 , 86 " 1 ®' 1 

r t Political 

same questions. The British farmer objected situation in 
to bearing the expenses of a war waged in En s lan 
behalf of the untaxed colonists, who, by 
smuggling, had always eluded most of the 
possible duties. Add to the fact that the 
colonists were heavily in debt to the British 
merchants, the grievance that "The fact 
was notorious that by the evasion of the navi- 
gation laws and acts of trade, the colonists 
had escaped the restrictions intended by those 
laws, and at the same time had received 
bounties and drawbacks from the British 
Exchequer which enabled them to under- 
sell the British merchants in the markets 
of Europe," 2 and it is easy to appreciate the 
feelings of the one party in England. Fur- 

J The Sugar Act reads, " That all the Monies which shall arise by the 
several Rates and Duties herein before granted . . . shall be en- 
tered separate and apart from all other Monies paid or payable to 
His Majesty . . . ; and shall be there reserved, to be, from time 
to time, disposed of by Parliament, towards defraying the necessary 
Expenses of defending, protecting, and securing, the British Colonies 
and Plantations in America." 

2 Mellen Chamberlain in J. Winsor, Narrative and Critical History 
of America, VI, 18. 



66 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

thermore, as we have seen, the continuance of 
the late war on the part of France was made 
possible largely because of the goods and sup- 
plies delivered by the smuggling expeditions 
of the colonists. 

The colonists and their sympathisers in 
England maintained that they were paying 
more than their share of the military and main- 
Colonists' tenance expenses, on account of the vast 

Objections amount f tra( je which they were obliged to 
to Revenue ^ ° 

Measures throw to England, but expressed a willingness 
to aid further, provided such aid was volun- 
tary. In England, the frequently changing 
cabinets were filled with men of divergent 
views. Pitt recognized the futility of an 
attempt by Parliament to place a fixed tax 
from without upon a people trained to believe 
such a procedure opposed to all natural laws. 

Another great question loomed up before 
the two parties on either side of the sea, — 
that of the "prerogative." The Liberals were 
attempting to transfer the power of the pre- 
rogative from the Crown to Parliament. Now 
the Albany Congress in 1754 had admitted 
the fact that all property in unoccupied lands 
belonged to the King, not to the people or a 



POLITICAL SITUATION 67 

party, and that therefore the political rela - 
tions were with the Crown, — "Not citizens 
within the Realm, but subjects only of the 
Crown." Franklin reasoned, "Sovereignty of 
the Crown I understand. The sovereignty ro * tive r »" 
of the British legislature out of Britain I do 
not understand," 1 and later, "America is not 
part of the dominions of England but of the 
King's dominion." 2 From the liberality of the 
charters, granted always by the King, and 
from the privileges usurped without contest 
and enjoyed for such a long time that they 
seemed almost as granted rights, the colonists 
had built up a bulwark of rights and assumed 
rights, the modification of which by Parlia- 
ment invited vehement opposition. It is not 
to be supposed, however, that the colonists 
were any fonder of the "prerogative" as such 
than were the Liberals in England: they sim- 
ply appealed to it to escape Parliament; 
against its exercise they objected as strongly 
as did the anti-prerogative party in England. 
The systems of government among the 
American colonies and the character of the 

1 Works, IV, 208. 2 Ibid, IV, 284. Marginal notes of Franklin's 
on English pamphlets. 



68 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

people are elements which must be considered 
before we begin to inquire into the methods 
adopted to enforce the Sugar Act and the 
reception it received. 

In considering either the material or polit- 
ical development of the mainland colonies 
of North America, it soon becomes manifest 
that it was the possible economic or financial 
returns which guided the course of the home 
country relative to establishing forms of gov- 
ernment. Until the middle of the seventeenth 
Looseness century, the policy, if it may be called such, of 

in Colonial . , ^ . » , ,1 

Govern- tne Crown was to give a tree rein to those 
ments trading companies and individuals, which it 

had deputized for colonizing purposes. The 
settlements were divided into many provinces 
and lacked any semblance of unification. Save 
Virginia in 1624, it was not until 1680 that any 
of the colonies was organized under a definite 
royal government. When the governments took 
their final shape there was exhibited a wide 
variety in the forms; the semi-independent in 
New England, the closely checked proprietary 
in Maryland, the liberal proprietary in Penn- 
sylvania, and the royal in most of the colonies. 1 

1 See C. McL. Andrews, Colonial Self-Government. 



POLITICAL SITUATION 69 

These different forms of government had, Points of 

Similarity 

however, two elements in common. First, in Forms f 



Govern- 
ment 



representation in some form was accorded to 
the people. Second, the influence of Parlia- 
ment was completely overshadowed by that 
of the King. All charters were liberal. The 
possession of these privileges for several 
generations fixed in the minds of the colonists 
the idea that the privileges were natural 
rights and it was the attempts of succeeding 
ministries to make this representation of 
minimum value, coupled with the effort of 
one party to maintain the power of the King's 
prerogative and, of the other party, to in- 
crease the power of Parliament, that stirred 
up the spirit of unrest and defiance of the 
next ten years. 

In dealing with the North American colo- 
nies, moreover, England was facing a problem 
differing radically in many respects from any 
of its other colonial problems; and it was a 
problem which had no precedents for guid- 
ance. Previously, no colonies had attained Uni que 

Character 
either the extent or the importance of those fthe 

in North America. Their natural resources A™ 6 ". *" 1 

Colonies 

made them of great advantage to the mother 



70 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Reasons 
Contribut- 
ing to 
Develop- 
ment of 
Spirit of 
Indepen-; 
dence 



country and the colonists were quick to 
grasp this fact. The colonists themselves 
were, as a rule, above the average of settlers. 
The motives which caused them to leave 
the mother land were higher than the average. 
The adventurers were outnumbered by the 
seekers after religious and political liberty. 
England was dealing with a class of colonists 
more nearly on a plane with her own citizens. 
In the last third of the seventeenth century, 
Sir Josiah Child was able to write, "I am now 
to write of a People whose Frugality, Industry, 
and Temperance, and the happiness of whose 
Laws and Institutions, do promise to them- 
selves long Life with a wonderful encrease of 
People, Riches, and Power." 

G. L. Beer points out that "The movement 
toward independence dates from the very 
foundation of the colonies" 1 and gives as 
reasons that the New England settlements 
were not a result of natural expansion but 
were more of the nature of a schism or seces- 
sion. The original characteristics of extreme in- 
dividualism in the immigrants were strength- 
ened by the isolation of the colonies. It was 

1 G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 161. 



POLITICAL SITUATION 71 

the policy of England to have the colonies 
bear their own administrative expenses, 
through appropriations from the colonial 
legislatures. Governors and judges were thus 
dependent on the people for their salaries and 
the colonists were early to learn that by the 
withholding of salaries they could exert a great 
influence over the actions of the officials. 
This not only made evasion of law easy but 
served to awaken the people to a fuller con- 
sciousness of the possibilities of gaining inde- 
pendence. 

If it is true — and the facts seem to justify 
Beer's conclusions — that a spirit of indepen- 
dence was ever the underlying motive for all 
unrest in the colonies, it may be assumed that 
the colonists did not have any clear concep- 
tion of it, and had they had, a sense of policy 
would have led them to keep expression of 
this spirit in the background. More was to be 
gained in every way by expressions of loyalty 
to England than by manifestations of a desire 
for independence. However great may have 
been the influences, some of which we have i^epen- 
noted, that would tend to keep alive the spirit ? ence Ke P t 
of independence, there was always the oppos- Background 



72 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

ing fact of weight that powerful enemies of the 
colonies, as well as of England, were present 
in America. As long as Spain and France 
exercised any powerful influence in America, 
so long was it essential that the English colo- 
nies should remain under the nominal protec- 
tion of England, for they were not strong 
enough to defend themselves and their ship- 
ping. The danger from the Spanish was the 
first to be eliminated and the French were 
finally disposed of in 1763. 1 Remaining in 
America as the only possible foes of the 
colonies were the Indians, and the danger 
from them was such as the settlers could over- 
come by their advantage in organized num- 
bers and a superior civilization. 

The first genuine political sentiment com- 
mon to all the colonies appeared simultane- 
ously with the passage of the Sugar Act in 
1764, and the preparations to enforce it. The 
Molasses Act, practically vitiated by thirty 
years' constant, nearly reputable, almost 
legalized smuggling, was the occasion of 
nothing more than sporadic outbursts of in- 

1 For a full treatment of the results, political and social, of the 
French and Indian War, cf. G. E. Howard, "Prelim, of the Revo- 
lution," chap. i. 



POLITICAL SITUATION 73 

dignation, arising for the most part from those 
who were occasionally affected financially. 
The change to the Sugar Act which, if enforced, 
would be felt, directly or indirectly, by every 
citizen of every community, awakened a genu- 
ine protest based, it would seem, less on the 
burden of this tax itself than on the principle 
of taxation involved. 

It is a mistake to assume that customs taxa- 
tion in itself was an innovation to the colonists, 
as one might well imagine from the clamor 

which the acts of 1763 and 1764 aroused. Be- Earlier 

. j » Acts of Self- 

sides the Parliamentary plantation duty ol Taxation 

1673, and one or two others, the assemblies ^^ 
of the various colonies had from the start lev- 
ied taxes and duties. No general or unified 
system could exist, but in practically all the 
colonies export and import duties and tonnage 
duties were levied. The tariff measures were 
usually adjusted to changing needs. A very 
thorough study of the commercial legislation 
of the colonies by A. A. Giesecke * reveals a 
mass of such measures the extent of which 
would lead to the conclusion that the colonists 
would have been accustomed to the payment 

1 A. A. Giesecke, American Commercial Legislation before 1789. 



74 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Political 
Troubles 
Local in 
Character 



of all kinds of duties and taxes. Substan- 
tially all these measures were measures of 
self -taxation. The later effort of Parliament 
to enforce general revenue duties intro- 
duced new elements capable of arousing op- 
position. 

Previous to 1763, the political clouds were 
such as might arise in the skies of any nation 
with colonies at a great distance and with 
inadequate means of communication. Un- 
popular governors met with disfavor, the 
signs of which no pains were taken to conceal. 
Colonial legislatures had their differences with 
their overlords. There existed then, as now, 
the hot-headed, excitable, and incendiary ele- 
ment in society, whose clamor was probably 
louder than their influence merited. The ma- 
jority of the people would have been classified 
as Tories, for, as late as 1776, the number of 
Tories was estimated at about two-fifths of the 
entire population. What discontent existed 
previous to 1763 was local rather than general 
in character. No unity of purpose was evi- 
dent among the different colonies and, in fact, 
they were not unified in any particular either 
of government or of sentiment. Even the 



POLITICAL SITUATION 75 

Acts of Trade could provoke no unanimous 
protest, for provisions which offended one 
section were considered as beneficial by an- 
other, and restrictive measures in which were 
latent the means of arousing the most general 
disapprobation, remained unenforced and in- 
effective. 

About 1756, "writs of assistance" began 
to be used in Massachusetts, and later in New 
Hampshire, by the customs officers to aid 
in their work against the smugglers. The" Wri tsof 

Assistance ' 

writs were issued by the Superior Court and 
directed any officer or subject of the King to 
aid in the forcible search for contraband goods 
in any vessel, store-house, or private building. 
They were transferable general warrants ex- 
tending during the reign of the sovereign, and 
returns were to be made to no officer or court. 
In England, this form of writ had been used 
since the reign of Charles II under act of 
Parliament, and it was issued by the Excheq- 
uer Court. By the Act of the 7th and 8th of 
William III its availability seemed to be ex- 
tended to the colonies without the naming of 
any court of issue. The Massachusetts As- 
sembly had given the same judicial authority 



76 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

to their Superior Court as that possessed by 
the Exchequer Court, and the Court over- 
came, if it had them, its scruples against 

Arguments granting writs, 
for Writs 

Upon the death of George II in 1760, all 

writs would expire within six months, and or- 
ganized opposition was formed against the 
petitions to the Court praying for new writs. 
Mr. Gridley had charge of the case for the 
collectors and the government. A large part 
of his argument was consumed in attempting 
to prove the legality of the writs, to Hutch- 
inson who was presiding at the hearing of the 
petition. Mr. Justice Gray, commenting on 
the legal aspects of the case, says, "A careful 
examination of the subject compels the con- 
clusion that the decision of Hutchinson and 
his associates has been too strongly condemned 
as illegal." l The legal questions, however, 
concern us less, but sufficient consideration 
must be given them to make plain the fact 
that the granting of the writs had a legal 
basis. Of more relevance was Gridley 's con- 
clusion, "It is true the common privileges of 
Englishmen are taken away in this Case, but 

1 Quincy's Reports, 540. 



POLITICAL SITUATION 77 

even their privileges are not so in cases of 
Crime and fine. 'Tis the necessity of the 
Case and the benefit of the Revenue that jus- 
tifies this Writ. * * * The necessity of having 
public taxes effectually * * collected is of 
infinitely greater moment to the whole, than 
the Liberty of any Individual." 1 

John Adams, in old age, wrote that Otis, I*?\ es 

° ' Otis's 

for the people, began his famous argument Alleged 
with "A dissertation on the rights of man in a Agahist 11 S 
state of nature." "From individual inde- Writs 
pendence he proceeded to association." 
"These principles and these rights were 
wrought into the English constitution, as 
fundamental laws." He "demonstrated that 
if the acts of trade were considered as reve- 
nue laws, they destroyed all our security of 
property, liberty, and life, every right of 
nature, and the English constitution and the 
charter of the province." " The Americans * * 
had connived at the distinction between ex- 
ternal and internal taxes, and had submitted 
to the acts of trade as regulations of commerce, 
but never as taxation, or revenue laws." He 
showed that the acts of trade were "unjust, 

1 Quincy's Reports, 481. 



78 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

oppressive, and impracticable; that they never 
had been and never could be executed ; that ' if 
the King of Great Britain in person were 
encamped on Boston Common, at the head of 
twenty thousand men, with all his navy on 
our coast, he would not be able to execute 
these laws. They would be resisted or eluded." 
In connection with the Molasses Act, "He 
asserted this act to be a revenue law, a 
taxation law, made by a foreign legislature, 
without our consent, and by a legislature who 
had no feeling for us, and whose interest 
prompted them to tax us to the quick." * The 
general trend of Otis's speech is then summed 
up in Tudor's words, "He reproached the na- 
tion, parliament, and king with injustice, il- 
liberality, ingratitude, and oppression in their 
conduct towards this country." 2 A. B. Hart 
is of opinion that Otis's actual speech "marks 
the tone of public opinion in Massachusetts in 
1761," and that it may be regarded "as the first 
in the chain of events which led directly and 
irresistibly to revolution and independence." 3 

u 2 This and preceding quotations are from Tudor's Life of 
James Otis, Chap. VI. But see criticism by C. F. Adams in Adams' 
Works, X, 362, n.; Gray in Quincy's Reports, p. 469, n.; and Ashley in 
Surveys, pp. 356 ff. 

3 A. B. Hart, American History Leaflets, No. 33, Introduction. 



CHAPTER V 

ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 

The year 1763 marks the converging of the 
political and economic forces operative in 
America. We have endeavored to show that 
the English commercial system divides itself 
into two parts. The main structure, consist- 
ing of the enactments concerning the means of 
shipping, and the trade between America, Main Body 
England, and the other countries of the world, ? w ra e 
excepting the West Indies, was considered by incapable 
the ruling powers and parties in England universal 
economically advantageous to England. It PoIitical 

Feeling 

happened to be in active force during the 
critical period in American history: its incep- 
tion antedated the formation of some of the 
colonies and its continuance did not cease 
with England's loss of her American posses- 
sions. 1 The natural products of England 
were less diversified than those of America; 
those of America were many and various. A 

1 See S. G. Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence, p. 68. 



80 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 



Universal 
Effect of 
Molasses 
Act 



system which met with general favor in Eng- 
land because of its apparent aid to home in- 
dustry could not be expected to arouse a simi- 
larly unanimous negative sentiment among the 
different colonial sections whose varied indus- 
tries were variously affected, and it did not. 
Those acts of trade which were constructed 
with a certain degree of reciprocal feeling 
towards the colonies could be appreciated in 
some sections and meant nothing in others. 
The restrictions on the rights of the colonists 
to buy except in the British markets were 
not seriously felt as a grievance, because the 
effect of this portion of the laws was largely 
to legislate commerce into those channels into 
which economic necessity would have natur- 
ally forced it. We may eliminate, therefore, 
this main portion of the Acts of Trade and 
Navigation as a matrix for the development of 
any very strong or general spirit of indepen- 
dence, common to all the colonies. 

The remaining part, the Molasses Act, 
based essentially on special favoritism to one 
party in interest, with all traces of mutual 
benefits omitted, would, if enforced, place 
all the colonies to a greater or less extent in a 



ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 81 

state of protest against the same inevitable 
result, — the ruin of a trade economically essen- 
tial in some measure to each. 

For thirty years the Molasses Act had 
remained practically unenforced. The time 
chosen to enforce it was the same at which 
the restraint on the desire for independence, Forces 

Converging 

caused by the presence of France in America, in 1763 
was removed. It was the same time at which 
the attempt of Parliament to contest the pre- 
rogative, a purely political move in which, to 
preserve their charter privileges, the Ameri- 
cans had some interest on the side of the King, 
was especially urged in England. The occas- 
sion which called the old Molasses Act and 
subsequent Sugar Act into an active life was 
the need of revenue, so that at this otherwise 
very inopportune time there was involved an- 
other principle most obnoxious in every re- 
spect to every colonist at all times, — taxation. 
This last feature served as a flux to fuse to- 
gether all those influences which had always 
tended towards each other in the composition 
of a revolutionary spirit. 

That which followed the decision to raise a 
revenue by means of the Sugar Act is inti- 



82 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

mately connected with the features of the 
Reforms evasions of the Molasses Act previous to 1763. 
by Evasions Each of the new regulations passed to facili- 
of Molasses tate the execution of these revenue acts is 

Act 

directly traceable to the fact that the great 
extent of the smuggling, expecially during the 
French War, showed only too clearly to the 
British government just where weaknesses 
lay and how they could best be remedied, and 
the possibilities in revenue in which a strict 
enforcement would result. 

Immediately following the decision to en- 
force the Trade Acts and to use the duties as 
Officers revenue mediums, Grenville and his cabinet 

of the Navy . 

Empowered became very active in having passed the nec- 
to Act as essary measures. It is of importance to note 
Officials that instructions to the governors were sent 
by a Secretary of State or emanated from the 
Treasury and not simply from the Board of 
Trade, indicating the complete change in 
purpose. The attempt to break up the illegal 
trade with the French had made it manifest 
that the most potent instrument which the 
government could bring to bear against illegal 
trade in general was the royal navy. The 
Navigation Act of 1660 had given authority 



ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 83 

to the officers of the navy to aid in its enforce- 
ment only in the case of vessels violating the 
law restricting the carrying trade of the colo- 
nies to English or colonial ships. The civil 
officers alone were empowered to enforce the 
other provisions of that and succeeding acts. 
To give the navy, then, the power to proceed 
against all forms of illegal trade, it was enacted 
in 1763 that officers of the navy should be 
on the same footing as custom-house officers. 
Special ships were also fitted out for the pur- 
pose of intercepting illegal trade. 

The evident weaknesses in the custom- 
house organization itself were also revealed by 
the smuggling in the past years. The correct- 
ing enactments were aimed at the most patent 
of these. The connivance of the officials 
having made possible much of the smuggling, 
all discretionary powers were henceforth Reorgan- 

denied to customs officers. They were for- !^ a I . on ° 

17 Customs 

bidden to accept as formerly the duty on Service 
part of a cargo as payment for the whole, and 
their salaries were established on a firmer 
basis, diminishing the temptation for them to 
resort to bribes. All coasting vessels, which, 
although of small tonnage, could go to the 



84 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

West Indies, had to get "sufferances" and 
take detailed "cockets" at each lading. This 
had not been demanded before and therefore 
those vessels most suitable for the smuggling 
trade had been free from such supervision. 
Those high in the customs service, who were 
wont to remain in England, were ordered to 
their posts and received strict instructions to 
do their utmost to prevent all forms of illegal 
trade, in order to obtain as great a revenue as 
possible. Jurisdiction in all cases arising from 
the Acts of Trade was given to the admiralty- 
courts, sitting without juries. The governors 
of all the provinces were required to report 
on the state of trade in their dominions. In 
passing, we should notice that these reports 
asserted that violations of the Acts of Trade 
in general were infrequent and of small relative 
importance. The evasions of the Molasses 
Act were always excepted and in some of the 
reports were entirely omitted, the facts being 
too well known for restatement. To connect 
more closely the administrative officials with 
England, the Earl of Northumberland was ap- 
pointed, in 1764, Vice-Admiral for all America, 
and William Spry, Judge of the Vice- Admiralty 



ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 85 

Court for all America. Later, in 1768, Cus- 
toms Commissioners for America, five with 
Burch and Hulton, entered on the scene. 
These were the essential changes made to bol- 
ster up the administration of the Trade Laws. 
The "writs of assistance" which we have seen 
were first used about 1756, were the most 

Continued 

potent instruments to serve the rejuvenated use of 
collecting arm of the British Treasury. Their nts 
use and abuse were confined for the most part 
to cases against evaders of the molasses and 
sugar duties. Whether or not we agree with 
President Adams when he says, "I do say in 
the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's ora- 
tion against writs of assistance, breathed into 
this nation the breath of life," the fact remains 
that what caused the extended use of the writs 
to be attempted was the smuggling in connec- 
tion with the West Indies trade. 

At the same time as the reduction on Additional 
molasses, duty was laid on Madeira wines and j^^^g 
certain French and Oriental manufactures. 
Revisions were also made in the drawback 
system which operated to the advantage of 
the home country. A blending of purposes is 
here discernible, indicating that the transition 



86 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

from a protective to a revenue basis was grad- 
ual and that commercial influences were still 
at work. But the effect of the revenue- 
producing measures was so much more im- 
portant that to the colonists the change 
appeared abrupt and momentous. 

The combined efforts of the royal navy, 
hitherto particularly effective, and of the re- 
organized customs service were not of sufficient 
strength to break up the contraband trade. 
Both the war vessels, and the sloops especially 
fitted out to break up the smuggling, were 
lightly esteemed by the colonists. One writer 
asserts that the colonists considered it "a 
sacred duty" to break the trade laws. 1 Ex- 
aggerated as this statement is, it contains an 
element of truth. Previous to 1763 motives 
Smuggling of self-protection may have led the merchants 
strongly to c° ns icl er it a duty to smuggle in all the 
Entrenched goods possible; after that date, a feeling of 
Broken up resentment at the principles of taxation in- 
volved may have led the populace to give 
moral and material support to the revenue- 
evading traders. This conjecture is con- 
firmed by a study of the events attending the 

1 S. G. Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence, I, 51. 



ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 87 

attempted enforcement of the Sugar Act. 
Violence to custom-house officers had pre- 
viously been almost unknown, probably be- 
cause of their willingness to gain popular 
favor through a lax administration of their 
offices. Now, however, appeared a change 
in the temper of the people, and this hostile 
temper w r as incensed more and more until the 
war resulted. Take, for instance, a few of the 
less well-known occurrences noted in Scharf 
& Westcott's "History of Philadelphia." 1 

In 1769, John Swift, a revenue officer, 
seized a cargo of Madeira wine, placing it in a 
store-house. During the night the wine was 
stolen by a band of citizens, who later stoned 
the collector's house. Although the owner 
returned the wine to the officers and some 
of the leaders of the riot were arrested, in- 
formers in the case were seized, pilloried, and 
tarred and feathered. Armed vessels were 
used by the officers but their operation was 
made difficult in that when seizures were made, 
the prizes were usually rescued by armed 
men who had no fear even in destroying the sentiment 

King's ships. Perhaps the most just cri- Favored 

Law 

1 Scharf & Westcott's History of Philadelphia, III, 1801 ff. Evasion 



88 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

terion of the temper of the people is found 
in the following extract from Bradford's 
"Pennsylvania Journal" of October, 1773, in 
connection with the appearance in Philadel- 
phia of Eben Richardson, a treasury spy sent 
from Boston. After describing the man, the 
Journal suggested that "All lovers of Liberty 
will make diligent search and having found 
this bird of darkness will produce him tarred 
and feathered at the Coffee-House, there to 
expiate his sins against his country by a 
public recantation." 

The stories of cargoes seized for non-pay- 
ment of duties and rescued by rioters in Phil- 
adelphia are duplicated in the histories of each 
of the great sea-ports. Added incentives to 
Brutality forcible protests were found in the brutality 

and Greed 

of Revenue of the revenue officers in their eagerness for 
Officers private gain. It was alleged that in one year 
the collectors pocketed illegally £17,000, while 
it was further alleged that vessels illegally 
laden, were allowed purposely to leave port 
so that they could later be brought back as 
prizes. 

The one indubitable feature of the protests 
against the enforcement of the Trade Laws 



ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 89 

is that those who continued to evade them 
received the moral support of the people as 
a whofe. This support increased each year 
after 1763. At that date, long established 
trade customs, based on what were considered 
natural rights, formed the main argument in 
justifying the traders to continue as formerly. 
But the effort to raise a revenue from this indis- 
pensable commerce served to arouse every 
citizen and that which aroused them was not 
primarily the burden of tax itself but a reali- Commercial 

^ d . Grievances 

zation that danger lurked in the new principle superseded 
propounded. Thus a question of government ^^JjJ 
in relation to commerce served to awaken a po- 
litical consciousness which exerted an increas- 
ingly strong influence, culminating in 1776. 

In importance, the commercial and eco- 
nomic sources of dissatisfaction steadily dwin- 
dled while the political forces which they had 
generated increased even more rapidly. In 
the great political protest caused by the 
Stamp Act (1765), by the Townshend Acts 
(1767), and by the subsequent governmental 
regulations of Parliament, the commercial 
element is almost entirely lacking. A com- 
plete reversal of tactics on the part of the 



90 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

colonists is exhibited in the Non-importation 
Agreements (1765 and 1767-1770). In view 
of the duties, it might have been expected 
that a great smuggling trade would have 
grown up in those European commodities so 
essential to the Americans. But as the impor- 
tation of these articles would have sooner or 
later benefited principally England, the colo- 
nists were led, from political motives, to agree 
not to import those articles, which, from an 
economic standpoint, would have been of 
great advantage to them. 

The burning of the Gaspee in Narragansett 
Bay (1772), and the destruction of the tea in 
Boston harbor (1773), were "applauded by 
the whole continent" as the newspapers of 
National the time had it. A national spirit was being 
Developed ra pidly developed and it needed now only 
the use of military force by the British to 
inflame the national political feeling into a 
militant national spirit, striving for inde- 
pendence. By the time of the Declaration of 
Independence, the objections to the commer- 
cial system were forgotten and no reference 
is made to them in the grievances except that 
of "cutting off the trade of the whole world," 



ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 91 

probably referring to the Boston Port Bill, a 
punitive measure and not a part of commer- 
cial policy. 

It is not within the scope of this essay to 
continue further in following the develop- 
ments directly preceding the formal break 
between the American colonies and England. 
The active influence of commercial regulations 
and their evasions had ceased. The move- 
ment which they were instrumental in start- 
ing had acquired sufficient momentum to carry 
itself along independently of any additional 
initial impetus in the form of dissatisfaction 
with commercial situations. After the British 
government came to a realization of the futil- 
ity of any attempt to raise a revenue by the 
methods hitherto employed, and lowered or 
removed many of the duties previously obnox- 
ious, 1 it was evident that the time was past 
when such conciliatory measures could avail Too Late 
in checking the movement for entire indepen- * or 

deilCC Measures 

At the beginning we stated that it would 

1 Against the protests of the British agricultural interests, great 
concessions were made to the colonists in the suspension or removal 
of the restrictions on the importations of grain, beef, pork, bacon, 
etc. 6 George III, 3; 7 Geo. Ill, 4; 8 Geo. Ill, 9; 10 Geo. Ill, 2. 



92 SMUGGLING IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

be our purpose to establish the part which 
smuggling played in the elements contributing 
to the development of the spirit of indepen- 
dence. Briefly let us summarize our facts and 
Conclusions conclusions with this purpose distinctly in 
mind: — Lax administration and consequent 
universal evasion Of governmental regula- 
tions designed to restrict that part of the 
colonial trade which economic reasons de- 
manded should be free and unrestrained, 
permitted this trade — that with the foreign 
West Indies — to develop to such an extent 
and importance that interference with it 
would entail commercial disaster which the 
colonies could not withstand. When the 
Seven Years' War made it necessary for 
England to attempt to break up the trade 
because of the aid it gave to the French, the 
magnitude which it had attained, the ineffi- 
ciency of the customs service, and the useful- 
ness of the royal navy were revealed. When, 
at the close of the war, the need of funds was 
pressing in England, the great possibilities 
of revenue which would result from a strict 
enforcement of the Molasses Act, modified 
into the Sugar Act, led Great Britain to 



ENFROCEMENT OF LAW AND ITS RESULTS 93 

strike at the West Indies trade in particular. 
Thus, the form of smuggling most general at 
the outbreak of the Revolution, — almost the 
only one of any extent which could have been 
caused by considerations other than those of 
private greed, — a form of smuggling which 
had formerly been considered, by reason of 
long enjoyment, as almost legal trade, was 
now transformed, by the decision to enforce 
the Sugar Act, into smuggling in a very real 
sense. This occurred at a time when the 
political forces incident upon the introduction 
of taxation measures and the removal of the 
danger from the French in America, directed 
the minds of the Americans towards indepen- 
dence. In this coalescence of commercial 
grievances and the political grievances to 
which they contributed, the former were fi- 
nally completely overshadowed by the latter, 
and smuggling must therefore be considered 
as an ultimate rather than as an immediate 
cause of the culmination of the spirit of inde- 
pendence — the American Revolution. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following bibliography represents a list of the works consulted 
in the preparation of this essay. 



John Adams, Works. 1850-1856. 

C. McL. Andrews, Colonial Self-Government (American Nation 
Series). 1904. 

John Ashley, Some Observations on a Direct Exportation of Sugar from 

the British Islands. 1735. 
W. J. Ashley, Surveys, Historical and Economic. 1900. 
G. Bancroft, History of the Vnited States. 1882-1884. 
G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy. 1907. 
G. L. Beer, Commercial Policy of England towards the American 

Colonies. 1893. 
Sir t. Bernard, Select Letters on the Trade and Government of 

America. 1764. 
E. G. Bourne, Spain in America (American Nation Series). 1904. 
Edw. Channing and A. B. Hart, Guide to the Study of American 

History. 1896. 
Edw. Channing and A. B. Hart, American History Leaflets, Num- 
bers 19 and 33. 
B. Edwards, History of the British West Indies. 1793. 
S. G. Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence. 1908. 
A. K. Fiske, The West Indies. 1899. 
Benj. Franklin, Works, edition by Sparks, 1856. 
A. A. Giesecke, American Commercial Legislation before 1789. 

University of Pennsylvania Studies. 1910. 
H. Gray, Writs of Assistance, in Quincy's Massachusetts Bay Reports. 

1865. 
E. B. Greene, Provincial America (American Nation Series). 1905. 
A. B. Hart, American History told by Contemporaries, 1897-1901. 
G. E. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, (American Nation 

Series). 1905. 
Macdonald, Documentary Source Book of American History. 1908 

D. Macpherson, Annals of Commerce. 1805. 
James Madison, Works. 1865. 

G. R. Minot, Continuation of the History of the Province of 
Massachusetts Bay. 1798-1803. 

95 



96 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Montesqueiu, The Spirit of the Laws, 1748. 

S. A. Morgan, Parliamentary Taxation. 1911. 

James Otis, The Rights of ths British Colonists Asserted and proved. 

1764. 
Timothy Pitkin, Statistical View of the Commerce of the United 

States. 1817. 
T. Pownal, Administration of the Colonies. 4th Edition, 1768. 
Scharf & Westcott, History of Philadelphia. 1884. 
Lord Sheffield, Observations on the Commerce of the American 

States. 6th Edition, 1784. 
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. 3d Edition, 1784 (1st, 1776). 
Sparks, Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution. 1829-1830. 
W. Tudor, Life of James Otis. 1823 
C. H. VanTyne, The American Revolution (American Nation Series). 

1905. 
W. B. Weed en, Economic and Social History of New England. 1890. 
J. Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America. 1884-1889. 
Pennsylvania Archives. 1852-1907. 
Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York. 1853-1858. 



Critical Essays on authorities and sources are found in the works 
of E. B. Greene, G. E. Howard, and Justin Winsor, noted above. A 
very complete list of Public Records and Laws, General Sources, 
General Histories and Monographs, most of which touch on this 
subject, is given by A. A. Giesecke in American Commercial Legisla- 
tion before 1789. 



INDEX 



Act of 1660, llf.; 82f. 

Act of 1663, 12f. 

Act of 1673, 73. 

Act of 1696 (7th & 8th of Wil- 
liam III), 8; 75. 

Act of 1699, restricting woolen 
manufacture, 22. 

Act of 1733. See molasses act. 

Act of 1750, regarding iron, 
16f. 

Act of 1757, 49: 54. 

Act of 1764. See sugar act. 

Acts of trade. See specific acts 
just above, ch. II, passim, and 
8ff.; 14f.; 27ff.; 33; 75; 77; 
80; 84; 85; 88f.; evasions of, 
probably unimportant, 27ff, ; 
feeling about, 75. See molasses 
act, and navigation acts. 

Adams, John, on the export of 
fish, 39f.; account of Otis's 
speech by, 77f.; judgment of, 
of same, 85. 

Albany Congress, on King's title 
to unoccupied land, 66. 

Aliens, prohibition of, from trad- 
ing in colonies, 14f. 

Amherst, General, complaint of, 
regarding supplying of French, 
50f.; regarding courts, 60f. 

Ashley, John, on export of sugar, 
37, n. 2. 

Azores, wines from, 13,n. 

Balance of trade, unfavorable, 
35; 37; less unfavorable to 
Southern colonies, 41. 



Bancroft, on revenue from Amer- 
ica, 9; on bounties for naval 
stores, etc., 17; on West In- 
dies, 45. 

Barrels and hogsheads, mate- 
rials for, 39. 

Beer, on value of colonies, 10; 44; 
on tea consumption and smug- 
gling, 30f.; work of, on extent 
of contraband trade, 54; opin- 
ion of, on "the movement 
toward independence," 70; 71. 

Bernard, on corruption of cus- 
toms officers, 47; on import of 
molasses, 47f. 

Board of Trade and Plantations, 
46; 82: report of, on colonial 
manufactures, 20. 

Boston, distilleries at, 36. 

Boston Port Bill, 91. 

Bounties, 17; 65. 

Bowsprits, 12, n.; 17. 

Bradford's Journal, extract from, 
88. 

Brandy, 38. 

Bribes, 83; 88. See connivance. 

Burch, a customs commissioner, 
85. 

Carrying trade, confined by navi- 
gation acts, 14f. 

Cattle, 20; 42, n. 

Child, on American colonies, 20; 
on character of colonists, 70. 

Coasting trade, exclusion of for- 
eigners from, 14f.; vessels for, 
83f . ; regulations concerning, 84. 



97 



98 



INDEX 



Cocoa, 20. 

Coffee, 2. 

Cockets, 84. 

Collectors, 46f.; 83. 

Colden, on specie, and trade with 
the foreign islands, 37. 

Colonial manufactures, develop- 
ment of, 19; 20; 21. See manu- 
factures, colonial. 

Colonial policy of European na- 
tions, 9f.; 24f. See England, 
colonial policy of. 

Colonial system. See the preced- 
ing, acts of trade, and ch, II, 
passim; feelings of colonists 
toward, 25f.; 26, n.; effects of, 
on Revolution, 26. 

Colonial trade, with England, 16, 
and n.; 28ff.; 31ff.; 35; 37f.; 54; 
65; 90f.; 91, n.; with the rest of 
Europe, 13, n.; 23; 29; 30f.; 
39f.; 47; 65; 85; 87: with the 
West Indies, 4, and n.; 5; 7; 29; 
37, and n. 2; 38; 39f.; 41; 42, 
n.; 48f.; 52; 60, and n.; 82; 92f. 
See Seven Years' War. See 
slave trade, and specific com- 
modities. 

Colonies, products of, 12, n.; 20; 
21; 23; 34; 41; 42, n.; 45; 69; 
79 cf. llf., and see West Indies, 
products of. 

Commerce, expansion of, 1; dan- 
gers of, in early West Indies, 6; 
character of, 7; value of, 8ff.; 
motive of colonization, 25. 
See colonial trade. 

Commercial policy, 9. See co- 
lonial policy. 

Commercial rivalry, 23f. 

Commercial system, English, ch. 



II; 79. See acts of trade, navi- 
gation acts, and colonial system. 

Community of political senti- 
ment, 72f.; 74; 80f. 

Conciliatory measures, too late, 
91. 

Connivance with smugglers, 47; 
ci.71; comparative heinousness 
of, 48; effects of, 83. See cus- 
toms service and bribes. 

Contraband trade. See smug- 
gling, and Seven Years' War. 

Competition, of colonial with 
English merchants, 65. 

Competitive articles, in English 
trade with the colonies, 29. 

Cotton, 2; 11; 20 ; 42, n. 

Courts, friction between vice- 
admiralty and common law, 59, 
and n.; Pownall on, 59, n.; N. 
Y. collector on, 60; complaints 
of Amherst regarding, 60f . ; ad- 
miralty, 84. 

Crown, relations of, to colonists, 
66ff.; policy of, 68. 

Credit, long, to American mer- 
chants, 31; cf. 65. 

Customs commissioners for 
America, 85. 

Customs officers, use of writs of 
assistance by, 75; feeling to- 
ward, 87; brutality and greed 
of, 88; corrupt gains of, 88. 
See next heading. 

Customs service, weakness of, 46 
58; 83; 92; organization of, 46 
reform of, 82f.; laxity of, 87 
92. See connivance, smuggling. 
Seven Years' War, and the 
preceding. 
Customs taxation, in colonies, 73. 



INDEX 



99 



Danish islands, trade with, 38. 

De Berdt, on restricting Ameri- 
can trade, 37, n.2. 

Defence, naval, 8; 26. 

Denmark, permitted commercial 
freedom to St. Thomas, 51. 

Denny, Governor, sale of "flags 
of truce" by, 50. 

Deputy collectors, 46. 

Discontent, local before 1763, 74. 

Distilleries, 36. 

Dominica, "free port" in, 51. 

Drawbacks, 18; 65; modified, 85f. 

Dutch, intermediaries in illicit 
trade, 52; seizures of, under 
"rule of 1756," 52. See Hol- 
land. 

Dutch islands, trade with, 38. 

Duties, reduction or removal of, 
91. See export duties, old sub- 
sidy, Stuarts, plantation duty, 
molasses act, sugar act, mo- 
lasses duties, sugar duties, Ma- 
deira wines, manufactures, 
drawbacks, taxation, revenue, 
etc., and Townshend duties. 

Dye-woods, 11. 

Earthenware, 28. 

Edwards, on slave trade, 5, and n. 

Embargo, by Pennsylvania, 51, 
n.; general, 55. 

England, advantaged by change 
in drawback system, 85f.; co- 
lonial policy of, 9f.; 13f.; 15: 
colonial trade with, Sheffield 
on, 32; Madison on, 33: "free 
ports" of, 51: commercial posi- 
tion of, 31ff. : prohibition of ex- 
port of coin by, 3: reasons for 
advantage in trading with the 



colonists, 31ff.; variations in 
policy of, 66. 

"English," meaning of term in 
navigation acts, 13, n. 

Enumerated articles, llf.; 12, n.; 
14; 15; IS; 19. 

Evasion of law, facilitated by 
dependence of officials, 71. See 
connivance, customs service, 
smuggling, and Seven Years' 
War. 

Exchequer Court, issue of writs 
by, 75f. 

Expenditures, by Great Britain, 
on colonial account, 63, n. 

Export duties, 73. See draw- 
backs. 

Fanue.il, connection of with 
smuggling, 48. 

Financial aid, of colonies to Eng- 
land, 49; 56; 63f.; 66. 

Fish, 12, n.; ISf.; 34; 35; 39f.; 
42, n.; 49; exports of, 39f. 

Fisheries, 13, n.; statistics of, 39f.; 
importance of West Indies 
trade to, 40; 42, n. 

"Flags of truce," 50f. 

Flour, 39; 42, n.; 54. 

Food staples, export of, during 
the Seven Years' War, 49; 54; 
66. See Seven Years' War. 

France, brandy trade of, protec- 
tion to, 38: colonial policy of, 
10: competition with, 23; 32f. : 
"free ports" of, 51: manufac- 
factures of, smuggled into col- 
onies, 31: opening of ports by, 
52: power of, in America, 56, 
and n.; 72; 81: prohibition of 
export of coin by, 3. 



100 



INDEX 



Franklin, on payment for im- 
ports from England, 37f.; opin- 
ions of, on sovereignty, 67. 

"Free ports," 51f. 

French, illegal trade with, 48ff.; 
55; 58; 82; 92. See Seven 
Years' War, and next heading. 

French islands, smuggling of 
manufactures from, 31; pro- 
hibited from exporting rum to 
France, 38; trade of colonists 
with, 38; 48f.; 49; 82; depend- 
ence of, for food supplies, 49. 

Fruits, Portugal, 47. 

Fustic, 11. 

Gaspee, burning of, 90. 

Germany, export of linen from, 
29; competition with, 32f. 

Giesecke, work of, on colonial 
tariffs, 73. 

Ginger, 11; 20. 

Glass, 28. 

Government in the colonies, 68f. 

Governors, position of, relative to 
enforcement of restrictions, 
46; dependence of, for salaries, 
71 ; treatment of, by people, 74; 
instructions to, source of, 82; 
reports of, 84. 

Grain (or "corn"), 20; 34; 91, n. 
See provisions. 

Gray, on writs of assistance, 76. 

Grenville, 8; 9; aim of, at reform, 
63; reform measures of, 82f. 

Grenville Act. See sugar act. 

Gridley, on writs of assistance, 
76f. 

Grievances, commercial super- 
seded by political, 89; 93; in 
Declaration, 90f. 



Gunpowder, illegal importation 
of, 60, and n. 

Haldane, Governor, on vessels at 
Monte Christi, 53. 

Hamilton, James, embargo at 
Philadelphia ordered by, 50f. 

Hats, 20; 21; 28. 

Hides and skins, enumeration of, 
19; hides, 42, n. 

Hinxman, Captain, on vessels at 
Monte Christi, 53. 

Holland, colonial policy of, 10: 
competition with, 23; 32f. : ex- 
port of linen from, 29: "free 
ports" of, 51: liberal policy of, 
3: smuggling of tea from, 30: 
tobacco shipment to, 23f. 

Horses, from Scotland and Ire- 
land, 13, n.; in West Indies 
trade, 40; 42, n. 

Howard, on smuggling, 62. 

Hulton, a customs commissioner, 
85. 

Hutchinson, decision of, on writs 
of assistance, 76. 

Illegal (illicit) trade, 7; 27; 30; 
34; 47; 48; 52; 55; 56; 58; 59; 
60; 63; 65; 82; 83; 84; 86. See 
smuggling and Seven Years' 
War. 

Indebtedness of colonists, 65. 
See credit. 

Independence, declaration of, 
grievances at time of, 90f; 
facilitated by dependence of 
officials, 71; by expulsion of 
French, 81; 93; spirit of, orig- 
inal with colonies, 71; reasons 
for keeping in background, 71; 



INDEX 



101 



not due to acts of trade, 80; 
smuggling hardly an immediate 
cause of, 93. 

Indians, 72. 

Indigo, 11. 

Individualism, of colonists, 70; 
cf. 68f. 

Informers, treatment of, 87. 

Ireland, 11; 13, n.; 22. 

Iron, act regarding, 16f.; enumer- 
ation of, 19; iron-making, 20. 

Iron manufactures, 28. 

Isolation of colonists, 70. 

Jamaica, "free port" in, 51. 
Judges, dependence of, for sal- 
aries, 71. 

Landed interest, care of, 22. 
Linen, 20; 29; trade in, statement 

of Maepherson on, 29. 
Lumber, 18f.; 19; 28, n.; 34; 35; 

40; 42, n. See timber. 

Maepherson, figures of, on colon- 
ial imports, 29; on linen com- 
merce, 29. 

Madeira wines, 13, n.; made duti- 
able, 85; seizure of, 87. 

Madison, on trade with England, 
33. 

Manufactures, colonial, restric- 
tion of, 16f.; 21; 22; develop- 
ment of, 19; 20; 21; encourage- 
ment of, 16f.; 19: English, 
superiority of, 28f.; 31; 32f. 
(but see linen, 29): increased 
esteem of, by England, 45: 
French, smuggling of, 31; made 
dutiable, 85 : linen, 29 : Oriental, 
85. See specific commodities. 



Massachusetts, use of writs of 
assistance in, 75ff. 

Masts, 12, n.; 17. 

Mauduit, on the fishery, quoted 
by Minot, 40. 

Meat, 34; 91, n. See provisions. 

Mercantilism, adopted by north- 
ern trading nations, 3. 

Merchants, British, 8ff.; 31; 65. 

Middle colonies, market for prod- 
ucts of, restricted, 34. 

Military supplies, importation of, 
from England, 54. 

Minot, quoting Mauduit on the 
fishery, 40. 

Molasses, 4, n.; 34; 36; 38; 40; 
42, n.; 43, n.; 47; 60; 64. 

Molasses act, 33f.; 34, n.; 42; 72; 
78; 80f.; 82; 84; 92; amended, 
64; possible reasons for non- 
enforcement of, 43f.; 46ff.; ac- 
cepted as a dead letter, 57; at- 
tempted enforcement of, 59; 
relaxed enforcement of, 61. 

Molasses duties, estimate of 
amount if collected, 48; rev- 
enue from, increase of, 58f.; 85. 

Monopoly, aim of commercial 
legislation, 10; accorded Vir- 
ginia tobacco, 24. 

Monte Christi, go-between in 
contraband trade, 52f. 

Montesquieu, on colonial sys- 
tem, 24f. 

National spirit, 90. 

"Naval officers, "46. 

Naval stores and materials, 17; 

45. 
Navigation acts, 8ff.; 14f.; 27, 

See acts of trade. 



102 



INDEX 



Navy, British, protection of col- 
onies by, 26; enforces "rule of 
1756," 52; aids customs officers 
58; officers of, powers of, to en- 
force trade and revenue laws, 
82f.; efficacy of, 82; 86; 92. 

New England, market for products 
of, restricted, 34; products of, 
20; 34; 42, n. 

New Hampshire, use of writs of 
assistance in, 75. 

New York, collector at, on courts 
and smuggling, 60; courts of, 
60f. 

Non-importation agreements, 90f . 

North American colonies, unique 
character of, 69f . 

Northumberland, Earl of, made 
Vice- Admiral, 84. 

Old subsidy, 18. 

Ordinance of 1645, 8. 

Otis, speech of, against writs of 
assistance (as given by Adams 
to Tudor), 77f., but see note, 
78; effect of, 85. 

Painters' colors, 28. 

Paper, 20; 29. 

Parliament, relations of, to col- 
onists, 69; taxation by, 73f.; 
regulations of, 89f. See West 
Indies, favoring of, and pre- 
rogative. 

Partial payment of duties, by 
tea-smugglers, 30; power of 
collectors to accept, 47; done 
away with by Grenville, 83. 

Penn, Admiral, 6. 

Pennsylvania, trade of, 38; abuse 
of "flags of truce" by, 50; em- 



bargo laid by, 51, n.; courts of, 
60f. 

Pennsylvania Journal, extract 
from, 88. 

Philadelphia, embargo at, 50f.; 
cases of seizure at, 87f. 

Piracy, prevalence of, in West 
Indies, 6. 

Pitch, 17. 

Pitkin, on encouragement of co- 
lonial industry, 17f.; on devel- 
opment of manufactures, 21; 
on export of fish, 39. 

Pitt, instructions of, on illegal 
trade, 55; opinion of, on taxing 
colonies, 66. 

Plantation duty, 73. 

Porcelain, 28. 

Portugal, aim of, in foreign trade, 
2; colonial policy of, 10; fish 
trade with, 40; specie from, 40; 
fruits and wines of, 47. 

Pownall, on trade with West 
Indies, 42, n.; on courts, 59, n. 

Precious metals, object of foreign 
trade, 2f.; prohibition of ex- 
port of, 3. 

Prerogative, 66ff. ; 81 ; interest of 
colonists in, 81. 

Privateering, in West Indies, 6. 

Privy Council, 46. 

Protection, 8fl\; 10; 15ff.; 21ff.; 
34; 85f. See acts of trade, mo- 
lasses act, and customs taxa- 
tion. 

Provisions, 18; 28, n.; 40; 42, n.; 
49; 51; 52; 54; 55; 66. See fish, 
grain, meat, rice, etc. 

Regulations. See acts of trade 
and customs service. 

Restrictions, 80; on import of 



INDEX 



103 



food-stuffs into England, 34; 
91, n. See acts of trade. 

Revenue, need of, by Great Brit- 
ain, 63; 92; policy regarding, 9; 
12; amount and cost of, from 
America, 9. 

Revenue acts, regulations to en- 
force, 82f. 

Revenue duties, 73; 74; 85f. See 
the preceding, and references 
under duties. 

Revolution. See independence. 

Rhode Island, distilleries at, 36; 
abuse of "flags of truce," by, 
51. 

Rice, 41; 49. 

Richardson, Eben, case of, 88. 

Rosin, 17. 

Rule of 1756, 52. 

Rum, 4, n.; 12, n.; 18f.; 28, n.; 34; 
36; 38; 40; 43, n.; trade in, with 
Africa, 36. 

St. Domingo, "free ports" in, 51. 

St. Eustatius, a "free port," 51; 
illegal imports from, 60. 

St. Thomas, a "free port," 51. 

Salaries, of governors and judges, 
71 ; of collectors, 83, n. 

Salt, 13, n. 

Salt provisions, 18. See provis- 
ions. 

Searchers, 46. 

Seizures, 87; 88. See customs 
service, and navy. 

Servants, from Scotland and Ire- 
land, 13, n. 

Seven Years' War, contraband 
trade during, 48ff.; motives of 
colonists in, 50; 57; aided by 
the "free ports," 51; by Monte 



Christi, 52; extent of, 53; na- 
ture and effects of, 54; 66; in- 
structions of Pitt concerning, 
55; revelations of, 79; preva- 
lence of, 82; 92. 

Sheffield, on use of colonies, 10; 
45; on admission of American 
shipping to British West In- 
dies, 28; on American trade, 
28ff . ; on evasion of trade regu- 
lations, 32; on preference of 
colonists for trade with Eng- 
land, 32; on expenditures on 
colonial account, 63, n. 

Shoes, 28. 

Ship-building, 34. 

Shipping, British, 8ff.; 28, n. 

Ships, non-enumerated, 12, and n. 

Silks, 29. 

Slaves, 5 and notes; 29; 36; 41. 

Slave trade, 5; 36. 

Sloops, for use against smugglers, 
86. 

Smith, Adam, on principle of 
gain from foreign trade, 3; on 
commercial system, 24f . 

Smugglers, feelings of, 57; sup- 
port of, 89. 

Smuggling, 7; 31; 32; 33; 42; 47 
48; 52; 54; 57; 58; 60; 62; 65 
66; 72; 75; 82; 83; 84; 85; 86 
89; 90; 93; methods of, 47; in 
England, 48; aided by "free 
ports," 52; revealed by Seven 
Years' War, 58; prevalence of, 
60; 62; Howard on, 62; vessels 
suited to, 84; induced use of 
writs of assistance, 85; feeling 
about, 86; 93 cf. 71. See the 
preceding, customs service, 
and Seven Years' War. 



104 



INDEX 



South Carolina, courts of, 60f. 
See next heading. 

Southern colonies, less chance for 
manufactures in, 20; relations 
of, to West Indies trade, 41. 

Spain, aim of, in foreign trade, 2; 
relations of, to slave trade, 5, 
and n.; colonial policy of, 9f.; 
rivalry with, 23; fish trade 
with, 40; specie from, 40; 
power of, in America, 72. 

Spanish, as intermediaries in 
illicit trade, 52. 

Spanish islands, trade with, 38. 

Specie, sources of, 35; 36; 40; 49; 
need of, 35; 49. 

Spirits, 43, n. See brandy, 
rum, and wines. 

Spry, William, made Vice-Admi- 
ralty Judge, 84f. 

Stamp Act, 89. 

Steel manufactures, 28. 

Stockings, 28. 

Stuarts, revenue policy of, 9. 

Sufferances, 84. 

Sugar, 2; 5; llf.; 20; 34; 37, n. 
2; 42, n.; 43, n.; 47; 64. 

Sugar act, 49, n. 2; 64; and n.; 
65, n.; 68; 72f.; 81; 87; 92; 
93. 

Sugar duties, 85. See molasses 
act, and sugar act. 

Superior Court, issue of writs 
by, 75f. 

Surveyors, 46. 

Surveyors-general of customs, 
46. 

Swift, John, seizure of wine by, 
87. 

Sympathy of colonists with Eng- 
land, 50; 56. 



Tar, 17. 

Tariffs, colonial, 73f. 

Taxation, principle of, in sugar 
act, 73; levy of, by colonies, 73; 
references of Adams to, 77f; 
need of, 81; service as flux to 
fuse revolutionary tendencies, 
81; resentment at, 86; 93; 
principle of, 89. 

Tea, 29; smuggling of, 30; de- 
struction of, 90. 

Timber, 12, n. See lumber. 

Tobacco, 2; 11; 12, n.; 18; 20; 
23f.; 41. 

Tories, 74. 

Townshend duties, 64f.; 89. 

Trade, colonial. See colonial 
trade, and commerce. 

Trading companies, 2; 68. 

Treasury, directs instructions to 
governors, 82; aided by writs 
of assistance, 85. 

Turpentine, 17. 

Vice-admiralty courts, apply the 
"rule of 1756," 52. See 
courts. 

Violence toward collectors, 47' 
87f. 

Viper, at Monte Christi, 53. 

Virginia, tobacco trade of, 23f.; 
Committee of Correspondence 
of, views of, on colonial sys- 
tem, 26, n.; Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor of, refuses to "license a 
Flag of Truce," 51. 

West Indies, products of, 2; 4; 
trade of, with England, 4, and 
n.; 5; with North America, 4; 
and n.; 5; 7; 29; 37: 38; 39; 
early trade of, 6; specie from, 



INDEX 



105 



36f.; trade of, importance of, 
to the fisheries, 39f.; relations 
of, to Southern colonies, 41; 
commodities in, 41; 42, and 
n.; reasons for favoring, 44f.; 
comparative value of, 44f . ; sense 
of government favor to, 45; 
attempt of, to prohibit trade 
with foreign islands, 45. 



Wines, Azores, 13, n.; Madeira, 
13, n.; 85; 87; Portugal, 47. 

Writs of assistance, 75(1'.; 85. 

Wool, 22f. 

Woolen namufacture, restriction 
of, 22. 

Woolens, 20; 22f.; 28. 

Yards, 17. 




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